y^^ 


CSB9 


H.L.MENCKEN 
GEORGE  JEAN  NATHAN 


WILLARD  HUNTINGTON  WRIGHT 


r 


V. 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 

SAN  uieeo        / 


LIBRARY  OF 

S.  L.  WRIGHT 


160 

H 


EUROPE  AFTER  8:15 


BERLIN 


EUROPE  AFTER  8:15 


H.^  Lf  MENCKEN 

GEORGE  JEAN  NATHAN 

WILLARD  HUNTINGTON  WRIGHT 


WITH  DECORATIONS 

By  THOMAS  H.   BENTON 


NEW     YORK  — JOHN     LANE     COMPANY 
TORONTO— BELL  &  COCKBURN— MCMXIV 


Copyright,  1914 

Bt  JOHN  LANE  COMPANY 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface  in  the  Socratic  Manner       ...  7 

Vienna 35 

Munich 71 

Berlin Ill 

London  . 145 

Paris ,.      ...  189 


PREFACE  IN 
THE  SOCRATIC  MANNER 

"  Nothing  broadens  and  mellows  the  mind  so  much  as 
foreign  travel." —  Dr.  Orison  Swett  Marden. 

THE  scene  is  the  brow  of  the  Hunger- 
berg  at  Innsbruck.  It  is  the  half- 
hour  before  sunset,  and  the  whole  lovely  val- 
ley of  the  Inn  —  still  wie  die  Nacht,  tief 
wie  das  Meer  —  begins  to  glow  with  mauves 
and  apple  greens,  apricots  and  silvery 
blues.  Along  the  peaks  of  the  great  snowy 
mountains  which  shut  it  in,  as  if  from  the 
folly  and  misery  of  the  world,  there  are 
touches  of  piercing  primary  colours  —  red, 
yellow,  violet  —  the  palette  of  a  synchro- 
mist.  Far  below,  hugging  the  winding 
river,  lies  httle  Innsbruck,  with  its  checker- 
board parks  and  Christmas  garden  villas. 


8       EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

A  battalion  of  Austrian  soldiers,  drilling  in 
the  Exerzierplatz,  appears  as  an  army  of 
grey  ants,  now  barely  visible.  Somewhere 
to  the  left,  beyond  the  broad  flank  of  the 
Hungerberg,  the  night  train  for  Venice 
labours  toward  the  town. 

It  is  a  superbly  beautiful  scene,  perhaps 
the  most  beautiful  in  all  Europe.  It  has 
colour,  dignity,  repose.  The  Alps  here 
come  down  a  bit  and  so  increase  their  spell. 
They  are  not  the  harsh  precipices  of  Swit- 
zerland, nor  the  too  charming  stage  moun- 
tains of  Northern  Italy,  but  rolling  billows 
of  clouds  and  snow,  the  high-flung  waves 
of  some  titanic  but  stricken  ocean.  Now 
and  then  comes  a  faint  clank  of  metal  from 
the  funicular  railway,  but  the  tracks  them- 
selves are  hidden  among  the  trees  of  the 
lower  slopes.  The  tinkle  of  an  angelus  bell 
(or  maj^be  it  is  only  a  sheep  bell)  is  heard 
from  afar.  A  great  bird,  an  eagle  or  a  fal- 
con, sweeps  across  the  crystal  spaces. 

Here  where  we  are  is  a  shelf  on  the  moun- 


PREFACE  9 

tainside,  and  the  hand  of  man  has  converted 
it  into  a  terrace.  To  the  rear,  clinging  to 
the  mountain,  is  an  Alpine  gasthaus  —  a  bit 
overdone,  perhaps,  with  its  red-framed  win- 
dows and  elaborate  fretwork,  but  still  genu- 
inely of  the  Alps.  Along  the  front  of  the 
terrace,  protecting  sightseers  from  the  sheer 
drop  of  a  thousand  feet,  is  a  stout  wooden 
rail. 

A  man  in  an  American  sack  suit,  with  a 
bowler  hat  on  his  head,  lounges  against  this 
rail.  His  elbows  rest  upon  it,  his  legs  are 
crossed  in  the  fashion  of  a  figure  four,  and 
his  face  is  buried  in  the  red  book  of  Herr 
Baedeker.  It  is  the  volume  on  Southern 
Germany,  and  he  is  reading  the  list  of 
Munich  hotels.  Now  and  then  he  stops  to 
mark  one  with  a  pencil,  which  he  wets  at  his 
lips  each  time.  While  he  is  thus  engaged, 
another  man  comes  ambling  along  the  ter- 
race, apparently  from  the  direction  of  the 
funicular  railway  station.  He,  too,  carries 
a  red  book.     It  is  Baedeker  on  Austria- 


10     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

Hungary.  After  gaping  around  him  a  bit, 
this  second  man  approaches  the  rail  near  the 
other  and  leans  his  elbows  upon  it.  Pres- 
ently he  takes  a  package  of  chewing  gum 
from  his  coat  pocket,  selects  two  pieces,  puts 
them  into  his  mouth  and  begins  to  chew. 
Then  he  spits  idly  into  space,  idly  but 
homerically,  a  truly  stupendous  expectora- 
tion, a  staggering  discharge  from  the  Alps 
to  the  first  shelf  of  the  Lombard  plain! 
The  first  man,  startled  by  the  report,  glances 
up.  Their  eyes  meet  and  there  is  a  vague 
glimmer  of  recognition. 

The  First  Man— "  American?  " 

The  Second  Man— "Yes:  St.  Louis." 

"  Been  over  long?  " 

"  A  couple  of  months," 

*'  What  ship'd  you  come  over  in?  " 

"  The  Kronprinz  Friedrich" 

"  Aha,  the  German  line !  I  guess  you 
found  the  grub  all  right." 

"  Oh,  in  the  main.  I  have  eaten  better, 
but  then  again,  I  have  eaten  worse." 


PREFACE  11 

"  Well,  they  charge  you  enough  for  it, 
whether  you  get  it  or  not.  A  man  could 
live  at  the  Plaza  cheaper." 

"  I  should  say  he  could.  What  boat  did 
you  come  over  in?  " 

"  The  Maurentic" 

"How  is  she?" 

"  Oh,  so-so." 

"  I  hear  the  meals  on  those  English  ships 
are  nothing  to  what  they  used  to  be." 

*'  That's  what  everybody  tells  me.  But, 
as  for  me,  I  can't  say  I  found  them  so  bad. 
I  had  to  send  back  the  potatoes  twice  and 
the  breakfast  bacon  once,  but  they  had  very 
good  lima  beans." 

"  Isn't  that  Enghsh  bacon  awful  stuff  to 
get  down?  " 

"  It  certainly  is:  all  meat  and  gristle.  I 
wonder  what  an  Englishman  would  say  if 
you  put  him  next  to  a  plate  of  genuine, 
crisp,  American  bacon? " 

"  I  guess  he  would  yell  for  the  pohce  — 
or  choke  to  death." 


12     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

"Did  you  like  the  German  cooking  on 
the  Kroniwinz? '' 

"  Well,  I  did  and  I  didn't.  The  chicken 
a  la  Maryland  was  very  good,  but  they  had 
it  only  once.     I  could  eat  it  every  day." 

"Why  didn't  you  order  it?" 

"  It  wasn't  on  the  bill." 

"  Oh,  bill  be  damned!  You  might  have 
ordered  it  anyhow.  Make  a  fuss  and  you'll 
get  what  you  want.  These  foreigners  have 
to  be  bossed  around.     They're  used  to  it." 

"  I  guess  you're  right.  There  was  a  fel- 
low near  me  who  set  up  a  holler  about  his 
room  the  minute  he  saw  it  —  said  it  was 
dark  and  musty  and  not  fit  to  pen  a  hog 
in  —  and  they  gave  him  one  twice  as  large, 
and  the  chief  steward  bowed  and  scraped  to 
him,  and  the  room  stewards  danced  around 
him  as  if  he  was  a  duke.  And  yet  I  heard 
later  that  he  was  nothing  but  a  Bismarck 
herring  importer  from  Hoboken." 

"  Yes,  that's  the  way  to  get  what  you 


PREFACE  18 

want.  Did  you  have  any  nobility  on 
board?" 

*'  Yes,  there  was  a  Hungarian  baron  in 
the  automobile  business,  and  two  English 
sirs.  The  baron  was  quite  a  decent  fellow: 
I  had  a  talk  with  him  in  the  smoking  room 
one  night.  He  didn't  put  on  any  airs  at 
all.  You  would  have  thought  he  was  an 
ordinary  man.  But  the  sirs  kept  to  them- 
selves. All  they  did  the  whole  voyage  was 
to  write  letters,  wear  their  dress  suits  and 
curse  the  stewards." 

"  They  tell  me  over  here  that  the  best 
eating  is  on  the  French  lines." 

"  Yes,  so  I  hear.  But  some  say,  too,  that 
the  Scandinavian  hues  are  best,  and  then 
again  I  have  heard  people  boosting  the 
Italian  lines." 

*'  I  guess  each  one  has  its  points.  They 
say  that  you  get  wine  free  with  meals  on 
the  French  boats." 

"  But  I  hear  it's  fourth  rate  wine." 


14     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

"  Well,  you  don't  have  to  drink  it." 

"  That's  so.  But,  as  for  me,  I  can't  stand 
a  Frenchman.  I'd  rather  do  without  the 
wine  and  travel  with  the  Dutch.  Paris  is 
dead  compared  with  Berlin." 

"  So  it  is.  But  those  Germans  are  get- 
ting to  be  awful  sharks.  The  way  they 
charge  in  Berhn  is  enough  to  make  you 
sick." 

"  Don't  tell  me.  I  have  been  there.  No 
longer  ago  than  last  Tuesday  —  or  was  it 
last  Monday?  —  I  went  into  one  of  those 
big  restaurants  on  the  Unter  den  Linden 
and  ordered  a  small  steak,  French  fried 
potatoes,  a  piece  of  pie  and  a  cup  of 
coffee  —  and  what  do  you  think  those 
thieves  charged  me  for  it?  Three  marks 
fifty!  Think  of  it!  That's  eighty-seven 
and  a  half  cents.  Why,  a  man  could  have 
got  the  same  meal  at  home  for  a  dollar. 
These  Germans  are  running  wild.  Ameri- 
can money  has  gone  to  their  heads.     They 


PREFACE  15 

think  every  American  they  get  hold  of  is  a 
millionaire." 

*'  The  French  are  worse.  I  went  into  a 
hotel  in  Paris  and  paid  ten  francs  a  day  for 
a  room  for  myself  and  wife,  and  when  we 
left  they  charged  me  one  franc  forty  a  day 
extra  for  sweeping  it  out  and  making  the 
bed!" 

"  That's  nothing.  Here  in  Innsbruck 
they  charge  you  half  a  krone  a  day  taxes'' 

"What!    You  don't  say!" 

"  Sure  thing.  And  if  you  don't  eat 
breakfast  in  the  hotel  they  charge  you  a 
krone  for  it  anyhow." 

"Well,  well,  what  next?  But,  after  all, 
you  can't  blame  them.  We  Americans 
come  over  here  and  hand  them  our  pocket- 
books,  and  we  ought  to  be  glad  if  we  get  any- 
thing back  at  all.  The  way  a  man  has  to 
tip  is  something  fearful." 

"  Isn't  it,  though !  I  stayed  in  Dresden 
a  week,  and  when  I  left  there  were  six 


16     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

grafters  lined  up  with  their  claws  out. 
First  came  the  iporteer.     Then  came  — " 

"  How  much  did  you  give  the  ]^orieer?  ** 

"  Five  marks." 

"  You  gave  him  too  much.  You  ought  to 
have  given  him  about  three  marks,  or,  say, 
two  marks  fifty.  How  much  was  your 
hotel  bill?" 

*'  Including  everything? " 

"  No,  just  your  bill  for  your  room." 

"  I  paid  six  marks  a  day." 

"  Well,  that  made  forty-two  marks  for 
the  week.  Now  the  way  to  figure  out  how 
much  the  ^porteer  ought  to  get  is  easy :  a  fel- 
low I  met  in  Baden-Baden  showed  me  how 
to  do  it.  First,  you  multiply  your  hotel 
bill  by  two,  then  you  divide  by  twenty- 
seven,  and  then  you  knock  off  half  a  mark. 
Twice  forty- two  is  eighty- four!  Twenty- 
seven  into  eighty-four  goes  about  three 
times,  and  a  half  from  three  leaves  two  and 
a  half.     See  how  easy  it  is?  " 

"  It     looks     easy,     anyhow.     But     you 


PREFACE  17 

haven't  got  much  time  to  do  all  that  figur- 
mg. 

*'  Well,  let  the  -porieer  wait.  The  longer 
he  has  to  wait  the  more  he  appreciates  you." 

"  But  how  about  the  others?  " 

"  It's  just  as  simple.  Your  chamber- 
maid gets  a  quarter  of  a  mark  for  every  day 
you  have  been  in  the  hotel.  But  if  you  stay 
less  than  four  days  she  gets  a  whole  mark 
anyhow.  If  there  are  two  in  the  party  she 
gets  half  a  mark  a  day,  but  no  more  than 
three  marks  in  any  one  week." 

*'  But  suppose  there  are  two  chamber- 
maids? In  Dresden  there  was  one  on  day 
duty  and  one  on  night  duty.  I  left  at  six 
o'clock  in  the  evening,  and  so  they  were 
both  on  the  job." 

"  Don't  worry.  They'd  have  been  on  the 
job  anyhow,  no  matter  when  you  left.  But 
it's  just  as  easy  to  figure  out  the  tip  for  two 
as  for  one.  All  you  have  to  do  is  to  add 
fifty  per  cent.,  and  then  divide  it  into  two 
halves,  and  give  one  to  each  girl.     Or,  bet- 


18     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

ter  still,  give  it  all  to  one  girl  and  tell  her 
to  give  half  to  her  pal.  If  there  are  three 
chambermaids,  as  you  sometimes  find  in  the 
swell  hotels,  you  add  another  fifty  per  cent, 
and  then  divide  by  three.     And  so  on." 

"  I  see.  But  how  about  the  hall  porter 
and  the  floor  waiter? " 

"  Just  as  easy.  The  hall  porter  gets 
whatever  the  chambermaid  gets,  plus 
twenty-five  per  cent. —  but  no  more  than 
two  marks  in  any  one  week.  The  floor 
waiter  gets  thirty  pfennigs  a  day  straight, 
but  if  you  stay  only  one  day  he  gets  half  a 
mark,  and  if  j^ou  stay  more  than  a  week  he 
gets  two  marks  flat  a  week  after  the  first 
week.  In  some  hotels  the  hall  porter  don't 
shine  shoes.  If  he  don't  he  gets  just  as 
much  as  if  he  does,  but  then  the  actual 
*  boots '  has  to  be  taken  care  of.  He  gets 
half  a  mark  every  two  days.  Every  time 
you  put  out  an  extra  pair  of  shoes  he  gets 
fifty  per  cent,  more  for  that  day.  If  you 
shine  your  own  shoes,  or  go  without  shining 


PREFACE  19 

them,  the  '  boots '  gets  half  his  regular  tip, 
but  never  less  than  a  mark  a  week." 

"  Certainly  it  seems  simple  enough.  I 
never  knew  there  was  any  such  system." 

"  I  guess  you  didn't.  Very  few  do. 
But  it's  just  because  Americans  don't  know 
it  that  these  foreign  blackmailers  shake  'em 
down.  Once  you  let  the  porte^r  see  that 
you  know  the  ropes,  he'll  pass  the  word  on 
to  the  others,  and  you'll  be  treated  like  a 
native." 

"  I  see.  But  how  about  the  elevator 
boy?  I  gave  the  elevator  boy  in  Dresden 
two  marks  and  he  almost  fell  on  my  neck, 
so  I  figured  that  I  played  the  sucker." 

"  So  you  did.  The  rule  for  elevator  boys 
is  still  somewhat  in  the  air,  because  so  few 
of  these  bum  hotels  over  here  have  elevators, 
but  you  can  sort  of  reason  the  thing  out  if 
you  put  your  mind  on  it.  When  you  get  on 
a  street  car  in  Germany,  what  tip  do  you 
give  the  conductor? " 

*'  Five  pfennigs." 


20     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

"  Naturally.  That's  the  tip  fixed  by  cus- 
tom. You  may  almost  say  it's  the  un- 
written law.  If  you  gave  the  conductor 
more,  he  would  hand  you  change.  Well, 
how  I  reason  it  out  is  this  way:  If  five 
pfemiigs  is  enough  for  a  car  conductor,  who 
may  carry  you  three  miles,  why  shouldn't 
it  be  enough  for  the  elevator  boy,  who  may 
carry  j^ou  only  three  stories? " 

"  It  seems  fair,  certainly." 

*'  And  it  is  fair.  So  all  you  have  to  do 
is  to  keep  accomit  of  the  number  of  times 
you  go  up  and  down  in  the  elevator,  and 
then  give  the  elevator  boy  five  pfennigs  for 
each  trip.  Say  you  come  down  in  the  morn- 
ing, go  up  in  the  evening,  and  average  one 
other  round  trip  a  day.  That  makes 
twent5^-eight  trips  a  week.  Five  times 
twenty-eight  is  one  mark  forty  —  and  there 
you  are." 

"  I  see.  By  the  way,  what  hotel  are  you 
stopping  at? " 

"  The  Goldene  Esel." 


PREFACE  21 

"How  is  it?" 

"  Oh,  so-so.  Ask  for  oatmeal  at  break- 
fast and  they  send  to  the  livery  stable  for 
a  peck  of  oats  and  ask  you  please  to  be  so 
kind  as  to  show  them  how  to  make  it." 

"  My  hotel  is  even  worse.  Last  night  I 
got  into  such  a  sweat  under  the  big  Geraian 
feather  bed  that  I  had  to  throw  it  off.  But 
when  I  asked  for  a  single  blanket  they 
didn't  have  any,  so  I  had  to  wrap  up  in 
bath  towels." 

"  Yes,  and  you  used  up  every  one  in 
town.  This  morning,  when  I  took  a  bath, 
the  only  towel  the  chambermaid  could  find 
wasn't  bigger  than  a  wedding  invitation. 
But  while  she  was  hunting  around  I  dried 
off,  so  no  harm  was  done." 

*'  Well,  that's  what  a  man  gets  for  run- 
ning around  in  such  one-horse  countries. 
In  Leipzig  they  sat  a  nigger  down  beside 
me  at  the  table.  In  Amsterdam  they  had 
cheese  for  breakfast.  In  Munich  the  head 
waiter  had  never  heard  of  buckwheat  cakes. 


22     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

In  Mannheim  they  charged  me  ten  pfennigs 
extra  for  a  cake  of  soap." 

"  What  do  you  think  of  the  German  rail- 
road trains? " 

"  Rotten.  That  compartment  system  is 
all  wrong.  If  nobody  comes  into  your  com- 
partment it's  lonesome,  and  if  anybody  does 
come  in  it's  too  damn  sociable.  And  if  you 
try  to  stretch  out  and  get  some  sleep,  some 
ruffian  begins  singing  in  the  next  compart- 
ment, or  the  conductor  keeps  butting  in  and 
jabbering  at  you." 

"  But  you  can  say  one  thing  for  these 
German  trains;  they  get  in  on  time." 

'*  So  they  do,  but  no  wonder!  They  run 
so  slow  they  can't  lielp  it.  The  w^ay  I 
figure  it,  a  German  engineer  must  have  a 
devil  of  a  time  holding  his  engine  in.  The 
fact  is,  he  usually  can't,  and  so  he  has  to 
wait  outside  every  big  town  until  the 
schedule  catches  up  to  him.  They  say  they 
never  have  accidents,  but  is  it  any  more  than 


PREFACE  28 

you  expect?  Did  you  ever  hear  of  a  mud 
turtle  having  an  accident?  " 

"  Scarcely.  As  you  say,  these  countries 
are  far  behind  the  times.  I  saw  a  fire  in 
Cologne ;  you  would  have  laughed  your  head 
off!  It  was  in  a  feed  store  near  my  hotel, 
and  I  got  there  before  the  firemen.  When 
they  came  at  last,  in  their  tinpot  hats,  they 
got  out  half  a  dozen  big  squirts  and  rushed 
into  the  building  with  them.  Then,  when  it 
was  out,  they  put  the  squirts  back  into  their 
little  express  wagon  and  drove  off.  You 
never  saw  such  child's  play.  Not  a  line  of 
hose  run  out,  not  an  engine  puffing,  not  a 
gong  heard,  not  a  soul  letting  out  a  whoop. 
It  was  more  hke  a  Sunday  school  picnic 
than  a  fire.  I  guess  if  these  Dutch  ever  did 
have  a  civilised  blaze,  it  would  scare  them 
to  death.     But  they  never  have  any." 

*'  Well,  what  can  you  expect?  A  coun- 
tiy  where  all  the  charwomen  are  men  and 
all  the  garbage  men  are  women  I " 


24     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

For  the  moment  the  two  have  talked  each 
other  out,  and  so  they  lounge  upon  the  rail 
in  silence  and  gaze  out  over  the  valley. 
Anon  the  gumchewer  spits.  By  now  the 
sun  has  reached  the  skyline  to  the  westward 
and  the  tops  of  the  ice  mountains  are  in 
gorgeous  conflagration.  Scarlets  war  with 
golden  oranges,  and  vermilions  fade  into 
palpitating  pinks.  Below,  in  the  valley, 
the  colours  begin  to  fade  slowly  to  a  uniform 
seashell  grey.  It  is  a  scene  of  indescribable 
loveliness;  the  wild  reds  of  hades  splashed 
riotously  upon  the  cold  whites  and  pale  hues 
of  heaven.  The  night  train  for  Venice,  a 
long  line  of  black  coaches,  is  entering  the 
town.  Somewhere  below,  apparently  in 
the  barracks,  a  sunset  gun  is  fired.  After 
a  silence  of  perhaps  two  or  three  minutes, 
the  Americans  gather  fresh  inspiration  and 
resume  their  conversation. 

"  I  have  seen  worse  scenery." 

"  Very  pretty." 

"Yes,  sir;  it's  well  worth  the  money." 


PREFACE  25 

**  But  the  Rockies  beat  it  all  hollow." 

*'  Oh,  of  course.  They  have  nothing 
over  here  that  we  can't  beat  to  a  whisper. 
Just  consider  the  Rhine,  for  instance.  The 
Hudson  makes  it  look  like  a  country  creek." 

"  Yes,  you're  right.  Take  away  the 
castles,  and  not  even  a  German  would  give 
a  hoot  for  it.  It's  not  so  much  what  a  thing 
is  over  here  as  what  reputation  it's  got. 
The  whole  thing  is  a  matter  of  press-agent- 
ing." 

"  I  agi'ee  with  you.  There's  the  '  beauti- 
ful, blue  Danube.'  To  me  it  looks  like  a 
sewer.  If  ifs  blue,  then  rm  green.  A 
man  would  hesitate  to  drown  himself  in 
such  a  mud  puddle." 

"But  you  hear  the  bands  playing  that 
waltz  all  your  life,  and  so  you  spend  your 
good  monej'^  to  come  over  here  to  see  the 
river.  And  when  you  get  back  home  you 
don't  want  to  admit  that  you've  been  a 
sucker,  so  you  start  touting  it  from  hell  to 
breakfast.     And    then    some    other   fellow 


26     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

comes  over  and  does  the  same,  and  so  on 
and  so  on." 

"  Yes,  it's  all  a  matter  of  boosting.  Day 
in  and  day  out  you  hear  about  Westminster 
Abbey.  Every  English  book  mentions  it; 
it's  in  the  nev^^spapers  almost  as  much  as 
William  Jennings  Bryan  or  Caruso.  Well, 
one  day  you  pack  your  grip,  put  on  your 
hat  and  come  over  to  have  a  look  —  and 
what  do  you  find?  A  one-horse  church  full 
of  statues!  And  every  statue  crying  for 
sapolio !  You  expect  to  see  something  mag- 
nificent, something  enormous,  something  to 
knock  your  eye  out  and  send  you  down  for 
the  count.  What  you  do  see  is  a  second- 
rate  graveyard  under  roof.  And  when  you 
examine  into  it,  you  find  that  two-thirds  of 
the  graves  haven't  even  got  a  dead  man  in 
them.  Whenever  a  prominent  Englishman 
dies,  they  put  up  a  statue  to  him  in  West- 
minster Abbey  —  no  matter  where  he  hap- 
pens to  he  buried.  I  call  that  clever  adver- 
tising.    That's  the  way  to  get  the  crowd." 


PREFACE  27 

"  Yes,  these  foreigners  know  the  game. 
They  have  made  millions  out  of  it  in  Paris. 
Every  time  you  go  to  see  a  musical  comedy 
at  home,  the  second  act  is  laid  in  Paris,  and 
you  see  a  whole  stageful  of  girls  doing  the 
hesitation,  and  a  lot  of  old  sports  having  the 
time  of  their  lives.  All  your  life  you  hear 
that  Paris  is  something  rich  and  racy,  some- 
thing that  makes  A^ew  York  look  like 
Roanoke,  Virginia.  Well,  you  fall  for  the 
ballyhoo  and  come  over  to  have  your  fling  — 
and  then  you  find  that  Paris  is  largely  bunk. 
I  spent  a  whole  week  in  Paris,  trying  to 
find  something  really  awful.  I  hired  one 
of  those  Jew  guides  at  five  dollars  a  daj^  and 
told  him  to  go  the  limit.  I  said  to  him: 
'  Don't  mind  me.  I  am  twenty-one  years  old. 
Let  me  have  the  genuine  goods.'  But  the 
worst  he  could  show  me  wasn't  half  as  bad 
as  what  I  have  seen  in  Chicago.  Every 
night  I  would  say  to  that  Jew :  '  Come  on, 
now  Mr.  Cohen;  let's  get  away  from  these 
tinhorn  shows.     Lead  me  to  the  real  stuff.' 


28     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

Well,  I  believe  the  fellow  did  his  damdest, 
but  he  always  fell  down.  I  almost  felt 
sorry  for  him.  In  the  end,  when  I  paid  him 
off,  I  said  to  him :  '  Save  up  your  money, 
my  boy,  and  come  over  to  the  States.  Let 
me  know  when  you  land.  I'll  show  you  the 
sights  for  nothing.  You  need  a  little  re- 
laxation. This  Baracca  Class  atmosphere 
is  killing  you.' 

"  And  yet  Paris  is  famous  all  over  the 
world.  'No  American  ever  came  to  Europe 
without  dropping  off  there  to  have  a  look. 
I  once  saw  the  Bal  Tabarin  crowded  with 
Sunday  school  superintendents  returning 
from  Jerusalem.  And  when  the  sucker 
gets  home  he  goes  around  winking  and  hint- 
ing, and  so  the  fake  grows.  I  often  tliink 
the  government  ought  to  take  a  hand.  If 
the  beer  is  inspected  and  guaranteed  in  Ger- 
many, why  shouldn't  the  shows  be  inspected 
and  guaranteed  in  Paris?  " 

"  I  guess  the  trouble  is  that  the  French- 
men themselves  never  go  to  their  o\\ti  shows. 


PREFACE  29 

They  don't  know  what  is  going  on.  They 
see  thousands  of  Americans  starting  out 
every  night  from  the  Place  de  I'Opera  and 
coming  back  in  the  morning  all  boozed  up, 
and  so  they  assume  that  everything  is  up  to 
the  mark.  You'll  find  the  same  thing  in 
Washington.  No  Washingtonian  has  ever 
been  up  to  the  top  of  the  Washington  monu- 
ment. Once  the  elevator  in  the  monument 
was  out  of  commission  for  two  weeks,  and 
yet  Washington  knew  nothing  about  it. 
When  the  news  got  into  the  local  papers  at 
last,  it  came  from  Macon,  Georgia.  Some 
honeymooner  from  down  there  had  written 
home  about  it,  roasting  the  government." 

"  Well,  me  for  the  good  old  U.  S.  A. 
These  Alps  are  all  right,  I  guess  —  but  I 
can't  say  I  like  the  coffee." 

"  And  it  takes  too  long  to  get  a  letter 
from  Jersey  City." 

"  Yes,  that  reminds  me.  Just  before  I 
started  up  here  this  afternoon  my  wife  got 
the  Ladies'  Home  Journal  of  month  before 


30     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

last.  It  had  been  following  us  around  for 
six  weeks,  from  London  to  Paris,  to  Berlin, 
to  Munich,  to  Vienna,  to  a  dozen  other 
places.  Now  she's  fixed  for  the  night.  She 
won't  let  up  until  she's  read  every  word  — 
the  advertisements  first.  And  she'll  spend 
all  day  to-morrow  sending  oiF  for  things  — 
new  collar  hooks,  breakfast  foods,  com- 
plexion soaps  and  all  that  sort  of  junk. 
Are  you  married  j^ourself  ?  " 

"No;  not  yet." 

"  Well,  then,  you  don't  know  how  it  is. 
But  I  guess  you  play  poker." 

"  Oh,  to  be  sure." 

"  Well,  let's  go  down  into  the  town  and 
hunt  up  some  quiet  barroom  and  have  a 
civihsed  evening.  This  scenery  gives  me 
the  creeps." 

"  I'm  with  you.  But  where  are  we  go- 
ing to  get  any  chips?  " 

"  Don't  worry.  I  carry  a  set  with  me. 
I  made  my  wife  put  it  in  the  bottom  of  my 
trunk,  along  with  a  bottle  of  real  whiskey 


PREFACE  31 

and  a  couple  of  porous  plasters.  A  man 
can't  be  too  careful  when  he's  away  from 
home." 

They  start  along  the  terrace  toward  the 
station  of  the  funicular  railway.  The  sun 
has  now  disappeared  behind  the  great  bar- 
rier of  ice  and  the  colours  of  the  scene  are 
fast  softening.  All  the  scarlets  and  ver- 
milions are  gone;  a  luminous  pink  bathes 
the  whole  scene  in  its  fairy  hght.  The  night 
train  for  Venice,  leaving  the  town,  appears 
as  a  long  string  of  blinking  lights.  A  chill 
breeze  comes  from  the  Alpine  vastness  to 
westward.  The  deep  silence  of  an  Alpine 
night  settles  down  The  two  Americans 
continue  their  talk  until  they  are  out  of 
hearing.  The  breeze  interrupts  and  ob- 
fuscates their  words,  but  now  and  then  half 
a  sentence  comes  clearly. 

"  Have  you  seen  any  American  papers 
lately?" 

"  Nothing  but  the  Paris  Herald  —  if  you 
call  that  a  paper." 


32     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

"  How  are  the  Giants  making  out? " 

*'.  .  .  badly  as  usual  .  .  .  rotten  .  .  . 
slump  .  .  .  shake  up  .  .  ." 

".  .  .  John  McGraw  .  .  .  Connie  Mack 
.  .  .  glass  arm  .  .  ." 

"...  homesick  .  .  .  give  five  dollars 
for  .  .  ." 

"...  whole  continent  without  a  single 
baseball  cl  .  .  ." 

"...  glad  to  get  back  .  .  .  damn 
tired  ..." 

".  .  .  damn  .  .  ." 

*'.  .  .  damn  .  ,  ." 


VIENN  A 


VIENNA 

THE  casual  Sunday  School  superin- 
tendent, bursting  with  visions  of  lux- 
urious gaieties,  his  brain  incited  by  refer- 
ences to  Wiener  hlut,  his  corpuscles  trip- 
ping to  the  strains  of  some  Viennese 
schlagermusik,  will  suffer  only  disappoint- 
ment as  he  sallies  forth  on  his  first  night  in 
Vienna.  He  is  gorgeously  caparisoned 
with  clean  linen,  talcumed,  exuding  Jockey 
Club,  prepared  for  surgical  and  psychic 
shock,  his  legs  drilled  hollow  to  admit  of 
precious  fluids,  his  pockets  bulging  with 
kronen.  He  is  a  lovely,  mellow  creature, 
a  virtuoso  of  the  domestic  virtues  when 
home,  but  now,  at  large  in  Europe,  he  craves 
excitement.  His  timid  soul  is  bent  on  par- 
ticipating in  the  deviltries  for  which  Vienna 
is  famous.     His  blood  is  thumping  through 

35 


36     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

his  arteries  in  three-four  time.  His  mind 
is  inflamed  by  such  strophes  as  '' Es  giebt 
nur  a  Kaiserstadt;  es  giebt  nur  a  Wien ''  and 
"^  Immer  luste„  fesch  und  munter,  und  der 
Wiener  geht  nit  unter/'  But  he  is  brought 
gradually  to  the  realisation  that  something 
is  amiss.  Can  it  be  that  the  vice  crusaders 
have  been  at  work?  Have  the  militant 
moralists  and  the  professional  women 
hunters,  in  their  heated  yearnings  to  flay 
the  transgressor,  fallen  foul  of  Vienna? 

He  expected  to  find  a  city  which  would 
be  one  roseate  and  romantic  revel,  given 
over  to  joys  of  the  flesh,  to  wine-drinking 
and  confetti-throwing,  overrun  with  hussies, 
gone  mad  with  lascivious  waltzes,  reeking 
with  Babylonish  amours.  He  dreamed  of 
Vienna  as  one  continual  debauch,  one  never- 
ceasing  saturnalia,  an  eternal  tournament 
of  perfumed  hilarities.  His  lewd  dreams 
of  the  "  gayest  city  in  Europe  "  have  pro- 
duced in  him  a  marked  hallucinosis  with 
visions    of    Neronic    orgies,    magnificently 


VIENNA  37 

prodigal  —  deliriums  of  chromatic  disorder. 
But  as  he  walks  down  the  Karntner- 
strasse,  encircles  the  Ring  and  stands  with 
bulging  inquisitive  eyes  on  the  corner  of 
the  Wiedner  Hauptstrasse  and  Karlsplatz, 
he  wonders  what  can  be  the  matter. 
Where,  indeed,  is  that  prodigality  of  flowers 
and  spangled  satin  he  has  heard  so  much 
about?  Where  are  those  super-orchestras 
sweating  over  the  scores  of  seductive 
waltzes?  Where  tlie  silken  ankles  and  the 
ghttering  eyes,  the  kisses  and  the  flutes,  the 
beery  laughter  and  the  delirious  leg  shak- 
ing? The  excesses  of  merrymaking  are  no- 
where discoverable.  Des  Moines,  Iowa,  or 
Camden,  New  Jersey,  would  present  quite 
as  festive  a  spectacle,  he  thinks,  as  he  gazes 
up  at  the  sepulchral  shadows  on  the  gigantic 
Opernhaus  before  him.  He  cannot  under- 
stand the  nocturnal  solitude  of  the  streets. 
There  is  actual  desolation  about  him.  A 
chlorotic  girl,  her  cheeks  unskilfully 
painted,  brushes  up  to  him  with  a  careless 


38     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

"  Geli  Rudl,  gib  ma  a  Spreitzn."  But  that 
might  happen  in  Cleveland,  Ohio  —  and 
Cleveland  is  not  framed  as  a  modern  Tyre. 
He  is  puzzled  and  distressed.  He  feels  like 
a  Heliogabalus  on  a  desert  isle.  He  con- 
sults his  watch.  It  is  past  midnight.  He 
has  searched  for  hours.  No  famous 
thoroughfare  has  escaped  him.  He  has 
reconnoitred  diligently  and  thoroughly,  as 
only  a  pious  tourist  bent  on  forbidden  pleas- 
ures knows  how.  He  is  the  arch-tj^pe  of 
American  traveller ;  the  God-fearing  deacon 
on  the  loose;  the  vestryman  returning  from 
Jerusalem.  Hopefully,  yet  fearfully,  he 
has  pushed  his  search.  He  has  traversed 
the  Karntnerring,  the  Kolowratring,  peered 
into  Stadt  Park,  hit  the  Stubenring,  scouted 
Franz  Josefs  Kai,  searched  the  Rotenturm- 
strasse,  zigzagged  over  to  the  Schottenring, 
followed  the  Franz,  Burg  and  Opern-Rings, 
and  is  back  on  the  Karlsplatz,  still  virtuous, 
still  sober! 

Not    a    houri.     Nary    a    carnival.     No 


VIENNA  39 

strain  of  the  "  Blaue  Donau "  has  wooed 
his  ear.  No  one  has  nailed  him  with  sachet 
eggs.  He  has  not  been  choked  bj^  quarts 
of  confetti.  His  conscience  is  as  pure  as 
the  brews  of  Munich.  He  is  still  in  a  bene- 
ficent state  of  primeval  and  exquisite  pro- 
phylaxis, of  benign  chemical  purity,  of  pro- 
tean moral  asepsis.  He  came  prepared  for 
deluges  of  wine  and  concerted  onslaughts 
from  ineffable  freimadeiin.  But  he  might 
as  well  have  attended  a  drama  by  Charles 
Klein  for  all  the  rakish  romance  he  has  un- 
earthed. His  evening  has  gone.  His  legs 
are  weaiy.  And  nothing  has  happened  to 
astound  or  flabbergast  him,  to  send  him 
sprawling  with  Cheyne- Stokes  breathing. 
In  all  his  promenading  he  has  seen  nothing 
to  affect  his  vasomotor  centres  or  to  produce 
Argyll-Robertson  pupils. 

Can  it  be  true,  he  wonders,  that,  after  all, 
Viennese  gaiety  is  an  illusion,  a  base  fabrica- 
tion? Is  the  Wiener  hlut,  like  lowan 
blood,    calm    and    sluggish?    Is    Vienna's 


40     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

reputation  bogus,  a  snare  for  tourists,  a 
delusion  for  the  unsophisticated?  Where  is 
that  far-renowned  geiniithlichkeit?  Has 
an  American  press  agent  had  his  foul  hand 
in  the  advertising  of  Austria's  capital? 
Perhaps  —  perhaps !  .  .  .  But  what  of 
those  Viennese  operas?  What  of  those  sen- 
suous waltzes,  those  lubric  bits  of  Schramm- 
musik  which  have  come  from  Vienna? 
And  has  he  not  seen  pictures  of  Viennese 
women  —  angels  a  la  mode,  miracles  of 
beauty,  Loreleis  de  luxe?  Even  Baedeker, 
the  papa  of  the  travelling  schoolmarms,  has 
admitted  Vienna  to  be  a  bit  frivolous. 

A  puzzle,  to  be  sure.  A  problem  for 
Copernicus  —  a  paradox,  a  theorem  with 
many  decimal  points.  So  thinks  the  tourist, 
retiring  to  his  hotel.  And  figuring  thus,  he 
falls  to  sleep,  enveloped  in  a  caressing 
miasma  of  almost  unearthly  respectability. 

But  is  it  true  that  Vienna  is  the  home  of 
purity,  of  early  retirers,  of  phlegmatic  and 
virtuous     souls?    Are     its     gaieties     mere 


VIENNA  41 

febrile  imaginings  of  liquorish  dreamers? 
Is  it,  after  all,  the  Los  Angeles  of  Europe? 
Or,  despite  its  appearances,  is  it  truly  the 
gayest  city  in  the  world,  redolent  of  ro- 
mance, bristhng  with  intrigue,  polluted  with 
perfume?  It  is.  And,  furthermore,  it  is 
far  gayer  than  its  reputation;  for  all  has 
never  been  told.  Gaiety  in  Vienna  is  an 
end,  not  a  means.  It  is  born  in  the  blood 
of  the  people.  The  carnival  spirit  reigns. 
There  are  almost  no  restrictions,  no  engines 
of  repression.  Alongside  the  real  Viennese 
night  life,  the  blatant  and  spectacular  ca- 
prices of  Paris  are  so  much  tinsel.  The 
life  on  the  Friedrichstrasse,  the  brightest 
and  most  active  street  in  Europe,  becomes 
tawdry  when  compared  with  the  secret 
glories  of  the  Karntnerring.  In  the  one  in- 
stance we  have  gaiety  on  parade,  in 
strumpet  garb  —  the  simulacrum  of  sin  — 
gaiety  dramatised.  In  the  other  instance, 
it  is  an  ineradicable  factor  of  the  city's  life. 
To  appreciate  these  differences,  one  must 


42     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

understand  the  temperamental  appeals  of 
the  Viennese.  With  them  gaiety  comes  un- 
der the  same  physiological  category  as  chil- 
blains, hunger  and  fatigue.  It  is  accepted 
as  one  of  the  natural  and  necessary  adjuncts 
of  life  like  eating  and  sleeping  and  lovemak- 
ing.  It  is  an  item  in  their  pharmacopoeia. 
They  do  not  make  a  business  of  pleasure  any 
more  than  the  Englishman  makes  a  business 
of  walking,  or  the  American  of  drinking 
Peruna  or  the  German  of  beerbibbing. 
For  this  reason,  pleasure  in  Vienna  is  not 
elaborate  and  external.  It  is  a  private,  in- 
timate thing  in  which  every  citizen  partici- 
pates according  to  his  standing  and  his 
pocketbook.  The  Austrians  do  not  com- 
mercialize their  pleasure  in  the  hope  of 
wheedling  dollars  from  American  pockets. 
Such  is  not  their  nature.  And  so  the  slum- 
ming traveller,  lusting  for  obscure  and  fas- 
cinating debaucheries,  finds  little  in  Vienna 
to  attract  him. 

Vienna   is  perhaps   the  one  city  in  the 


VIENNA  43 

world  which  maintains  a  consistent  attitude 
of  genuine  indifference  toward  the  outsider, 
which  resents  the  intrusion  of  snoopers  from 
these  palhd  States,  which  dehberately  makes 
it  difficult  for  foreign  Florizels  to  find  di- 
version. The  liveliest  places  in  Vienna  pre- 
sent the  gloomiest  exteriors.  The  official 
guides  maintain  a  cloistered  silence  re- 
garding those  addresses  at  which  Viennese 
society  disports  itself  when  the  ledgers  are 
closed  and  the  courts  have  adjourned.  The 
Viennese,  resenting  the  intrusion  of  out- 
siders upon  his  midnight  romances,  holds 
out  no  encouragement  for  globe-trotting 
Don  Juans.  He  refuses  to  be  inspected  and 
criticised  by  the  inquisitive  sensation  hunters 
of  other  nations.  Money  will  not  tempt 
him  to  commercialize  his  gaiety  and  regulate 
it  to  meet  the  morbid  demands  of  the  in- 
terloper. Hence  the  external  aspect  of 
sobriety.  Hence  the  veneer  of  piety. 
Hence  the  sepulchral  silence  of  the  midnight 
thoroughfares.     Hence  the  silence  and  the 


44     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

desolation  which  meet  the  roaming  tourist. 
In  this  respect  Vienna  is  different  from 
any  other  large  city  in  Europe.  The 
joys  of  Parisian  night  life  are  as  artificial 
as  cosmetics.  They  are  organised  and  exe- 
cuted by  technicians  subtly  schooled  in  the 
psychology  of  the  Puritan  mind.  To  the 
American,  all  forms  of  pleasure  are  ex- 
cesses, to  be  indulged  in  only  at  rare  in- 
tervals ;  and  Paris  supplies  him  with  the  op- 
portunities. Berlin,  and  even  Munich, 
makes  a  business  of  gaiety.  St.  Peters- 
burg, patterning  after  Paris,  excites  the 
visitor  with  visions  of  gaudy  glory;  and 
London,  outwardly  chaste,  maintains  a 
series  of  supper  clubs  which  in  the  dis- 
honesty of  their  subterranean  pleasures  sur- 
pass in  downright  immorality  any  city  in 
Europe.  Budapest  is  a  miniature  Babylon 
burning  incense  by  night  which  assails  the 
visitor's  nostrils  and  sends  him  into  delirious 
ecstasies.  San  Francisco  and  New  York 
are  both  equipped  with  opportunities  for 


-     VIENNA  45 

all-night  indulgences.  In  not  one  of  these 
cities  does  the  sight  seeker  or  the  joy  hunter 
find  difficulty  in  sampling  the  syrups  of  sin. 
Mysterious  guides  assail  him  on  the  street 
corners,  pouring  libidinous  tales  into  his 
furry  ears,  tempting  him  with  descriptions 
like  Suetonius's  account  of  the  Roman  cir- 
cuses. Automobiles  with  megaphones  and 
placards  summon  him  from  the  street  cor- 
ners. Electric  signs  —  debauches  of  writh- 
ing colour  —  intoxicate  his  mind  and  point 
the  way  to  haunts  of  Caracalla. 

But  Vienna!  He  will  search  in  vain  for 
a  key  to  the  night  life.  By  bribery  he  may 
wring  an  admission  or  obtain  an  address 
from  the  hotel  clerk;  but  the  menage  to 
which  he  is  directed  is,  alas,  not  what  he 
seeks.  He  may  plead  with  cabmen  or  buy 
the  honour  of  taxicab  drivers,  but  little  in- 
formation will  he  obtain.  For  these  gentle- 
men, strange  as  it  may  seem,  are  almost  as 
ignorant  of  the  gaiety  of  Vienna  as  he  him- 
self.   And  at  last,  in  the  early  morning, 


46     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

after  ineffectual  searching,  after  hours  of 
assiduous  nosing,  he  ends  up  at  some 
haffeehaus  near  the  Schillerplatz,  partakes 
of  a  chaste  ice  with  Wiener  gehdch  and 
goes  dolorously  home  —  a  virgin  of  cir- 
cumstance, an  unwilling  and  despondent 
Parsifal,  a  lofty  and  exquisite  creature 
through  lack  of  opportunity,  the  chaste  vic- 
tim of  a  killjoy  conspiracy.  He  is  that 
most  tragic  figure  —  an  enforced  pietist, 
a  thwarted  voluptuar}\  Eheu!  Eheu! 
Dies  faustus! 

In  order  to  come  into  intimate  touch  with 
the  night  life  of  Vienna  one  must  live  there 
and  become  a  part  of  it.  It  is  not  for  spec- 
tators and  it  is  not  public.  It  involves  every 
family  in  the  city.  It  is  inextricably  woven 
into  the  home  life.  It  is  elaborate  because 
it  is  genuine,  because  it  is  not  looked  upon 
as  a  mere  outlet  for  the  repressions  of  puri- 
tanism.  From  an  Anglo-Saxon  point  of 
view  Vienna  is  perhaps  the  most  degenerate 
city  in  the  world.     But  degeneracy  is  geo- 


VIENNA  •         47 

graphical;  morals  are  temperamental. 
This  is  why  the  Viennese  resents  intrusion 
and  spying.  His  night  life  involves  the  na- 
tional spirit.  His  gaiety  is  not  a  preroga- 
tive of  the  demi-monde y  but  the  usufruct  of 
all  classes.  Joy  is  not  exclusive  or  solitary 
with  the  Viennese.  He  is  not  ashamed  of 
his  frolics  and  hilarities.  He  does  not  take 
his  pleasures  hypocritically  after  the  man- 
ner of  the  Occidental  moralist.  He  is  a  gay 
bird,  a  sybarite,  a  modern  Lucullus,  a  Baron 
Chevrial  —  and  admits  it. 

To  be  sure,  there  is  in  Vienna  a  miniature 
night  life  not  unlike  that  of  the  other  Euro- 
pean capitals,  but  it  requires  constant  at- 
tention and  assiduous  coddling  to  keep  it 
alive.  The  better  class  Viennese  will  have 
none  of  it.  It  is  a  by-product  of  the  un- 
derworld and  is  no  more  characteristic  of 
Vienna  than  the  gilded  cafes  chantants 
which  cluster  round  the  Place  Pigalle  on 
Montmartre  are  characteristic  of  Paris. 
These  places  correspond  to  the  Palais  de 


48     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

Danse  and  the  Admirals  Palast  in  Berlin; 
to  the  Villa  Villa  and  the  Astor  Club  in 
London ;  to  Reisenweber's  in  New  York ;  to 
L'Abbaye  and  the  Rat  Mort  in  Paris  — 
allowing  of  course  for  the  temperamental 
influences  (and  legal  restrictions)  of  the 
different  nations. 

Let  us  arouse  a  snoring  cabman  and  make 
the  rounds.  Why  not?  All  merrymaking 
is  shot  through  with  youth,  no  matter  how 
dolorous  the  joy  or  how  expensive  the  in- 
dulgence. So  let  us  partake  of  the  feast 
before  us.  Our  first  encounter  is  with 
the  Tabarin,  in  the  Annagasse,  an  estab- 
lishment not  unlike  the  Bal  Tabarin 
in  Paris.  We  hesitate  at  the  entrance, 
but  being  assured  by  the  doorkeeper, 
garbed  Hke  Louis  Seize,  that  it  is  "  ein  dus- 
serst  feines  und  modernes  nacht  etahlisse- 
ment "  we  enter,  partake  of  a  bottle  of 
champagne  (thirty  kronen  —  New  York 
prices)  and  pass  out  and  on  to  Le  Chapeau 
Rouge,   where   we   buy   more   champagne. 


VIENNA  49 

From  there  we  go  to  the  Rauhensteingasse 
and  enter  Maxim's,  brazenly  heralded  as  the 
Montmartre  of  Vienna.  Then  on  to  the 
Wallfischgasse  to  mingle  with  the  confused 
visitors  of  the  Trocadero,  where  we  are 
urged  to  have  supper.  But  time  is  fleeting. 
The  cabmeter  is  going  round  like  a  tortured 
turbine.  So  we  hasten  out  and  seek  the 
Wiehburggasse,  where  we  discover  a  "  Palais 
de  Danse  " —  seductive  phrase,  suggestive 
of  ancient  orgies.  But  we  cannot  tarry  — 
in  spite  of  Mimi  Lobner  (Ah,  lovely  lady!) 
who  sings  to  us  "  Liebliche  Kleine  Dinger- 
chen  '*  from  "  Kino-Konigin,"  and  makes 
us  buy  her  a  peach  bowle  in  payment.  One 
more  place  and  we  are  ready  for  the  resort 
in  the  Prater,  the  Coney  Island  of  Vienna. 
This  last  place  has  no  embroidered  name. 
Its  existence  is  emblazoned  across  the  blue 
skies  by  an  electric  sign  reading  "  Etablisse- 
ment  Parisien."  It  is  in  the  Schellinggasse 
and  justifies  itself  by  the  possession  of  a 
very    fine    orchestra   whose    militdr-kapell- 


50     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

meister  knows  naught  but  inebriate  tanz- 
musik. 

Again  in  the  open  air,  headed  for  the 
Kaisergarten,  we  reflect  on  our  evening's 
search  for  nachtvergnilgungen.  With  the 
lone  exception  of  our  half -hour  with  Mimi, 
it  has  been  a  sad  chase.  All  the  places  (with 
the  possible  exception  of  the  Trocadero) 
have  been  cheaply  imitative  of  Paris,  with 
the  usual  appurtenances  of  arduous  waiters, 
gorgeously  dressed  women  dancing  on  red 
velvet  carpets,  fortissimo  orchestras,  ex- 
pensive wines,  hlumenmddl,  hothouse  straw- 
berries and  other  accessories  of  manufac- 
tured pleasure.  But  compared  with  Paris 
these  places  have  been  second  rate.  The 
damen  (I  except  thee,  lovely  Mimi!)  have 
not  inflamed  us  either  with  their  beauty  or 
with  manifestations  of  their  esprit  gaulois. 
For  the  most  part  they  have  been  stodgy 
women  witli  voluminous  bosoms,  Eiffel 
towers  of  bought  hair  —  bison  with  astonish- 
ing hyperboles  and  parabolas,  dressed  in  all 


VIENNA  51 

of  the  voluptuous  splendour  but  possessing 
none  of  the  grace  of  the  Rue  de  la  Paix. 
Furthermore,  these  establishments  have 
lacked  the  deportmental  abandon  which 
saves  their  prototypes  in  Paris  from  down- 
right banality.  All  of  their  deviltries  have 
been  muted,  as  if  the  guests  suffered  from 
a  pathological  fear  of  pleasure.  Strangers 
we  were  when  we  entered.  As  strangers 
we  take  our  departure. 

Why  do  I  linger  thus,  you  ask,  over  these 
hothouse  caperings?  For  the  same  reason 
that  we  are  now  going  to  inspect  the  Kaiser- 
garten.  Because  this  phase  of  life  repre- 
sents an  unnatural  development  in  the 
Viennese  mode  of  pleasure,  something 
grafted,  yet  something  characteristic  of  the 
impressionability  of  the  Viennese  mind. 
The  Viennese  are  a  hybrid  and  imitative 
people.  They  have  annexed  characteristics 
distinctly  French.  In  the  Kaisergarten 
these  characteristics  are  more  evident  than 
elsewhere.     Here  is  a  people's  playground 


52     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

in  which  all  manner  of  amusements  are 
thrown  together,  from  the  halhaus,  where 
nothing  but  expensive  champagne  is  sold, 
to  the  scenic  railway,  on  which  one  may  ride 
for  fifty  heller.  This  park  presents  a 
bizarre  and  chaotic  mingling  of  outdoor  con- 
certs, variety  theatres,  bierkabarettSj  mov- 
ing picture  halls,  promenades  and  sideshow 
attractions  of  the  Atlantic  City  type.  The 
Kaisergarten  is  the  rendezvous  of  the  bour- 
geoisie, the  heaven  of  hoi  polloi  —  rotund 
merchants  with  walrus  moustachios,  dapper 
young  clerks  with  flowing  ties,  high-chokered 
soldiers,  their  boots  polished  into  ebony 
mirrors,  fat-jowled  maidens  in  rainbow 
garb  .  .  .  There  is  lovemaking  under  the 
Linden  trees,  beer  drinking  on  the  midway, 
schnitzel  eating  in  the  restaurants. 
Homely  pleasantries  are  thrown  from  heavy 
German  youths  to  the  promenading 
mddchen.  One  catches  such  greetings  and 
whisperings  as  '^  Du  hist  oba  heuf  fescJi 
g'scholnt "  and  "  Ko  do  net  so  lang  umanan- 


VIENNA  53 

derbandln/'  There  exists  a  spirit  of  buoy- 
ant and  genuine  fellowship.  But  here 
again  it  is  a  private  and  personal  brand  of 
gaiety.  Let  the  obvious  stranger  whisper 
"  Schatz'rV  to  a  powdered  Fritzi  on  the 
bench  next  to  him,  and  he  will  be  ignored 
for  his  impertinence.  The  same  salutation 
from  a  Viennese  will  call  forth  a  coquettish 
"^  Raubershua/"  Even  the  Amerikan-har 
in  the  centre  of  the  Kaisergarten  (in  charge 
of  no  less  a  celebrity  than  Herr  Pohnstingl!) 
will  not  oifer  the  tourist  the  hospitality 
he  hopes  to  find.  He  will  find  neither 
Americans  nor  American  drinks.  The 
cocktail  —  that  boon  to  all  refined  palates, 
when  mixed  with  artistry  and  true  poetic 
feeling  —  circulates  incognito  at  Hen* 
Pohnstingl's.  Such  febrifuges  as  mas- 
querade under  that  name  are  barely  recog- 
nisable by  authentic  connoisseurs,  by  Ra- 
belaises  of  sensitive  esophagi,  by  true  lovers 
of  subtly  concocted  gin  and  vermouth  and 
bitters.     But  the  Viennese,  soggy  with  acid 


54     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

beer,  his  throat  astringentized  by  strong 
coffee,  knows  not  the  difference.  And  so 
the  Amerikan-har  flourishes. 

It  was  here  that  I  discovered  Gabrielle,  a 
sad  little  French  girl,  alone  and  forsaken  in 
the  midst  of  merriment,  drinking  Dubonnet 
and  dreaming  of  the  Boulevard  Montpar- 
nasse.  I  bought  her  another  Dubonnet  — 
what  stranger  would  have  done  less?  In 
her  was  epitomized  the  sadness  of  the 
stranger  in  Vienna.  Lured  by  lavish  tales 
of  gaiety,  she  had  left  Paris,  to  seek  an  un- 
savoury fortune  in  the  love  marts  of  Vienna. 
But  her  dream  had  been  broken.  She  was 
lonely  as  only  a  Parisian  can  be,  stranded  in 
an  alien  countrj^  She  knew  scarcely  a  score 
of  German  words,  in  fact  no  language  but 
her  own.  Her  youth  and  coquetry  did  not 
avail.  She  was  an  outsider,  a  deserted  on- 
looker. She  spoke  tenderly  of  the  Cafe  du 
Dome,  of  Fouquet's,  the  Cafe  d'Harcourt, 
Marigny  and  the  Luxembourg.  She  in- 
quired sentimentally  about  the  Bal  BulHer. 


t^ 


VIENNA 


VIENNA  55 

She  was  pretty,  after  the  anaemic  French 
type  of  beauty,  with  pink  cheeks,  pale  blue 
eyes  and  hair  the  colour  of  wet  straw.  She 
had  the  slender,  shapely  feet  of  the  French 
cocotte.  Her  stockings  were  of  thin  pink 
silk.  Her  slender,  soft  fingers  were  without 
a  ring.  Her  jewelry,  no  doubt,  had  long 
since  gone  to  the  money  lender.  She 
seemed  childishly  happy  because  I  sat  and 
talked  to  her.  Poor  Httle  Gabriellel  Her 
tragedy  was  one  of  genuine  bereavement,  or 
perhaps  the  worst  of  all  tragedies  —  lone- 
liness. I  shall  never  think  again  of  Vienna 
without  picturing  that  stranded  girl,  sip- 
ping at  her  reddish  drink  in  the  Amerikan- 
har  in  the  Kaisergarten.  But  her  case  is 
typical.  The  Viennese  are  not  hospitable 
to  strangers.  They  are  an  intimate,  self- 
sufficient  people. 

Let  us  turn,  however,  from  the  little  Ga- 
brielle  to  a  more  fascinating  and  exquisite 
creature,  to  a  happier  and  more  buoyant 
denizen  of  Viennese  night  Hfe,  to  a  lady  of 


56     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

more  elegant  attire.  In  short,  behold  Frau- 
lein  Bianca  Welse.  In  her  are  the  alkaloids 
of  gaiety.  She  irradiates  the  joy  fulness  of 
the  city.  In  her  infancy  she  was  hummed 
to  sleep  with  snatches  from  the  "  Wiener 
Blut,"  the  booziest  waltz  in  all  Christendom. 
Bianca  is  tall  and  catlike,  but  deliciously 
proportioned.  Her  hair  is  an  alloy  of 
bronze  and  gold.  Her  skin  is  pale,  and  in 
her  cheeks  there  is  the  barest  bit  of  rose, 
like  a  flame  seen  through  ivory.  Her  eyes 
are  large,  and  their  blue  is  almost  primary. 
Her  face  is  a  perfect  oval.  Her  lips  are 
full  and  abnormally  red.  Her  slender, 
conical  hands  are  always  active  like  those  of 
a  child,  and  she  wears  but  little  jewelry. 
Her  gowns  come  from  Paquin's  and  seem 
almost  a  part  of  her  body. 

This  is  Bianca,  the  most  beautiful  woman 
in  all  Europe.  Do  I  seem  to  rave?  Then 
let  me  answer  that  perhaps  you  have  not 
seen  Bianca.  And  to  see  her  is  to  be  her 
slave,  her  press  agent.    It  was  Bianca's  pic- 


VIENNA  57 

ture  that  went  emblazoning  over  two  con- 
tinents a  few  years  ago  as  the  supreme  type 
of  modern  feminine  beauty,  according  to  the 
physiological  experts  and  the  connoisseurs 
of  pulchritude.  But  it  is  not  because  of  the 
lady's  gift  of  beauty  that  I  feature  her  here. 
It  is  because  she  so  perfectly  typifies  the 
romance  of  that  whirling  city,  so  accurately 
embodies  the  spirit  of  Vienna's  darkened 
hours.  In  the  afternoon  you  will  find  her 
on  the  Karntnerstrasse  with  her  black- 
haired  little  maid.  At  five  o'clock  she  goes 
for  haffeetsch'rl  to  Herr  Reidl's  Cafe  de 
I'Europe,  in  the  Stefanplatz.  With  her  are 
always  two  or  three  Beau  Brummels  chat- 
ting incessantly  about  music  and  art,  wooing 
her  suavely  with  magnificent  technique, 
drinking  coffee  intermittently,  and  lavishly 
tipping  the  kellner. 

These  haffeeliduser  are  the  leading  public 
institutions  of  Vienna.  They  take  the  place 
of  private  teas,  culture  clubs,  dramatic  read- 
ings and  sewing  circles  in  other  countries. 


58     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

All  Vienna  society  turns  out  in  the  after- 
noon to  partake  of  melange^  kaffee  mit 
schlagohers^  kaimziner,  schuoarzen,  weckerhi 
and  kttisersemmehi.  But  no  hard  drinks, 
no  vulgar  pretzels  and  ^vursts.  Only 
Americans  order  beer  and  cognac  at  the 
coffee  houses,  and  generally,  after  once  sam- 
pling them,  they  follow  the  bibulous  lead 
of  the  Viennese.  Each  kaffeehaus  has  its 
own  coterie,  its  own  habitues.  Thus,  at  the 
Cafe  de  I'Europe  one  finds  the  worldly  set, 
the  young  bloods  with  artistic  leanings. 
The  Cafe  de  I'Opera,  in  the  Opernring,  is 
patronised  by  the  advocates  and  legal  at- 
taches. At  the  Cafe  Scheidl,  in  the  Wall- 
fischgasse,  foregather  the  governmental 
coterie,  the  army  officers  and  burgomasters. 
The  merchants  discuss  their  affairs  at  the 
Cafe  Schwarzenberg,  in  the  Karntnerring. 
At  the  Cafe  Heinrichshof,  in  the  Opernring, 
one  finds  the  leading  actors  and  musicians 
immersed  in  the  small  talk  of  their  craft. 
Thus  it  goes.     In  all  the  leading  cafes — - 


VIENNA  59 

the  Habsburg,  Landtmann,  Mokesch,  Gar- 
^enbau,  Siller,  Priickl  —  the  tables  are  filled, 
and  the  coffee  drinking,  the  haunzerln  eat- 
ing and  the  gossiping  go  on  till  opera  time. 
The  theatre  in  Vienna  is  a  part  of  the  life. 
It  is  not  indulged  in  as  a  mere  amusement  or 
diversion,  like  shooting  the  chutes  or  going 
to  church.  It  is  an.  evening's  obligation. 
This  accounts  for  the  large  number  of 
Vienna  theatres  and  for  their  architectural 
beauty.  But  do  not  think  that  when  you 
have  attended  a  dozen  such  places  as  the 
Hofoperntheatre,  the  Hofburgtheatre,  the 
Deutsches  Volkstheatre  and  the  Carltheatre 
you  have  sensed  the  entire  theatrical  appeal 
of  Vienna.  Far  from  it.  No  city  in  the 
world  is  punctuated  with  so  large  a  number 
of  semi-private  intimate  theatres  and  caba- 
rets as  Vienna  —  theatres  with  a  seating 
capacity  of  forty  or  fifty.  You  may  know 
the  Kleine  Biihne  and  the  Max  und  Moritz 
and  the  Holle,  but  there  are  fifty  others, 
and  every  night  finds  them  crowded. 


60     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

Theatregoing  is  occasionally  varied  with 
lesser  and  more  primitive  pastimes.  Go  out 
on  the  crooked  Sieveringerstrasse  and  be- 
hold the  multitudes  waxing  mellow  over  the 
sweet  red  heuriger.  Go  to  the  Volksgar- 
ten-Cafe  Restaurant  any  summer  night 
after  seven,  pay  sixty  heller,  and  see  the 
crowds  gathered  to  hear  the  military  band 
concerts;  or  seek  the  halls  in  winter  and 
join  the  audiences  who  come  to  wallow  in 
the  florid  polyphonies  of  the  Wiener  Ton- 
kilnstler  Orcliester.  Sundays  and  holiday 
nights  go  to  Grinsing  and  Nussdorf  and 
watch  the  people  at  play.  Make  the  rounds 
of  the  wine  houses  —  the  Rathaus  Keller, 
the  Nieder-Oesterreichisches  Winzerhaus, 
the  Tommasoni  —  and  behold  the  spooning 
and  the  rough  joking. 

All  this  is  part  of  the  night  life  of  Vienna. 
But  it  is  not  the  life  in  which  Bianca  par- 
ticipates. Therefore  we  cannot  tarry  in 
the  wine  houses  or  at  the  concerts.  Instead 
let  us  attend  the  opera.     We  go  early  before 


VIENNA  61 

the  sun  has  set.  The  curtain  rises  at  six- 
thirty  to  permit  of  our  leaving  by  half  past 
ten,  for  there  is  much  to  do  before  morning. 
After  the  performance  —  dinner!  The 
Viennese  are  adepts  in  the  gustatory  art. 
Their  meals  have  the  heft  of  German  vic- 
tualty  combined  with  the  delicacies  and  im- 
aginative quahties  of  French  cooking.  An 
ideal  and  seductive  combination!  A  rich 
and  toothsome  blending!  .  .  .  Bianca 
touches  my  arm  and  says  we  must  make 
haste.  This  evening  I  am  to  be  honoured 
with  dinner  in  her  apartment.  So  we  drive 
to  her  rooms  on  the  Franzenring  overlook- 
ing the  Volksgarten. 

The  Viennese  dinner  hour  is  eleven,  and 
this  is  why  the  tourist,  fingering  his  guide 
book,  looks  in  vain  for  the  diners.  Sacher's, 
the  Imperial,  the  Bristol  and  the  Spaten- 
brau  are  deserted  in  the  early  evenings. 
Even  after  the  Opera  these  restaurants  pre- 
sent little  of  the  life  found  in  the  Paris,  Ber- 
lin or  London  restaurants.     The  Viennese  is 


62     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

not  a  public  diner;  and  here  again  we  find 
an  explanation  for  the  tourist's  impressions. 
When  the  Viennese  goes  to  dinner,  he  does 
so  privately.  Bianca's  dinner  that  night 
was  typical.  There  were  twelve  at  table. 
There  was  music  by  a  semi-professional 
pianist.  The  service  was  perfect  —  it  was 
more  like  a  dinner  in  a  cabinet  particulier  at 
a  Parisian  cafe  than  one  in  a  private  apart- 
ment. But  here  we  catch  the  spirit  of 
Vienna,  the  transforming  of  what  the  other 
cities  do  publicly  into  the  intimacies  of  the 
home. 

At  one  o'clock,  the  meal  finished,  the  in- 
timate theatre  claimed  us.  There  the  glori- 
ous Bianca  met  her  lovers,  her  little  follow- 
ing. At  these  theatres  every  one  know^s 
every  one  else.  It  is  the  social  lure  as  well 
as  the  theatrical  appeal  that  brings  the  peo- 
ple there.  Bianca  chats  with  the  actors, 
flirts  with  the  admiring  Lotharios  and  drinks 
champagne.  At  her  side  sit  the  great- 
est artists  and  dramatists  of  the  day,  princes 


VIENNA  63 

and  other  celebrities.  At  one  of  these  per- 
formances I  saw  her  beA\dtching  two  men  — 
one  a  composer,  the  other  a  writer  —  whose 
names  lead  the  artistic  activities  of  South- 
ern Europe.  But  Bianca  is  prodigal  with 
her  charms,  and  before  the  final  curtain  was 
dropped  she  had  shed  her  fascinations  on 
eveiy  patron  in  the  theatre.  And  I,  whose 
thirty  kronen  had  passed  her  by  the  satin- 
pantalooned  and  lace-bosomed  doorkeeper, 
was  quite  forgot.  But  such  is  Viennese  eti- 
quette. An  escort  may  pay  the  fiacre 
charge  and  the  entrance  fee,  but  such  a 
meagre,  vulgar  claim  does  not  suffice  to  ob- 
tain a  ladjT-'s  entire  attention  for  the  evening. 
Such  selfishness  is  not  understood  by  the 
Viennese. 

The  real  business  of  the  evening  came 
later.  The  coffee  drinking,  the  theatre  and 
the  dining  had  been  so  many  prehminaries 
for  that  form  of  amusement  which  forms  the 
basis  of  all  Viennese  night  life  —  dancing. 
The  Viennese  dance  more  than  any  people 


64.     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

in  the  world.  During  FascJiingzeit  there  are 
at  least  fifty  large  public  balls  every  night. 
These  balls  become  gay  at  one  o'clock  and 
last  through  the  entire  night.  For  the  most 
part  they  are  masked,  and  range  from  the 
low  to  the  high,  from  those  where  the  en- 
trance fee  is  but  two  kronen  to  the  elaborate 
ones  whose  demand  is  thirty  kronen. 
Every  night  in  Vienna  during  the  season 
fifty  thousand  people  are  dancing.  Nor 
are  these  balls  the  suave  and  conventional 
dances  of  less  frank  nations.  By  the  mere 
presentation  of  a  flower  any  one  may  dance 
with  any  one  else.  In  every  phase  of  night 
life  in  Vienna  flowers  play  an  important 
part.  They  constitute  the  language  of  the 
carnival.  To  such  an  extent  is  this  true 
that,  though  you  may  ask  for  a  dance  by 
presenting  a  flower,  you  may  not  ask  ver- 
bally, though  your  tongue  be  polished  and 
your  soul  ablaze  with  poetry.  And  while 
you  are  dancing  you  may  not  talk  to  your 


VIENNA  65 

partner.  She  is  yours  for  that  dance  —  but 
she  is  yours  in  silence.  Should  you  meet 
her  the  following  afternoon  in  the  Prater 
or  on  parade  in  the  Karntnerstrasse,  her 
eyes  will  look  past  you,  for  the  night  has 
gone,  carrying  with  it  its  memories  and  its 
intoxications. 

It  is  this  spirit  of  evanescence,  this  youth- 
ful buoyancy,  snatched  out  of  the  passing 
years,  lived  for  a  moment  and  then  forgot, 
which  constitutes  the  genuine  gaiety  of 
Vienna.  It  is  an  unconscious  gaiety,  sensed 
but  not  analysed,  in  the  very  soul  of  the 
people.  It  keeps  the  Viennese  young  and 
makes  him  resent,  intuitively,  the  invasion 
of  other  nations  to  whom  gaiety  is  artificial. 
That  is  why  the  dances  are  open  to  all,  why 
the  formality  of  introductions  would  be 
scoffed  at.  Their  blood  has  all  been  tapped 
from  the  same  fountain  head.  There  are 
affinities  between  all  Viennese  phagocytes. 
The  basis  of  all  romance  is  ephemeral  in  its 


66     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

nature,  and  in  no  people  in  the  world  do 
we  find  so  great  an  element  of  transitoriness 
in  pleasure-taking  as  in  the  Viennese. 

A  description  of  one  of  the  masked  balls 
would  tell  you  the  whole  of  the  night  life 
in  Vienna,  but  until  you  have  become  a  part 
of  one  of  them  you  would  not  understand 
them.  Not  until  you  yourself  had  accom- 
panied the  fair  Bianca  and  watched  her  for 
a  whole  evening,  could  you  appreciate  how 
these  dances  differ  from  those  of  other 
cities.  Externally  they  would  appear  the 
same.  Photographed,  they  would  look  hke 
any  other  carnival  ball.  But  there  are 
things  which  a  photographic  plate  could 
never  catch,  and  the  spirit  of  meiTiment 
which  runs  through  these  dances  is  one.  If 
you  care  to  see  them,  go  to  the  Blumensale 
or  to  the  Wimberger.  The  crowds  here  are 
typical.  However,  if  you  care  for  a  more 
lavish  or  elaborate  gathering,  you  will  find 
it  at  the  Musikvereinsale  or  the  Sofiensale. 
These    latter    two    are    more    fashionable. 


VIENNA  67 

though  no  one  remains  at  any  of  the  masken- 
bdlle  the  whole  evening.  The  dancers  go 
from  one  ball  to  another ;  and  should  you,  at 
five  in  the  morning,  return  to  a  balhaus 
where  you  had  been  earlier  in  the  evening, 
you  would  find  an  entirely  new  set  of 
dancers. 

Let  us  then  take  our  departure,  with  the 
masked  ball  still  in  full  progress,  our  hearts 
still  thumping  to  the  measures  of  an  intoxi- 
cating waltz,  the  golden  confetti  still  glisten- 
ing in  our  hair,  perfumed  powder  on  our 
clothes,  the  murmuring  of  clandestine  whis- 
pers still  in  our  ears,  the  rhythm  of  swaying 
girls  still  in  our  blood.  As  we  pass  out  into 
the  bleak  street,  the  first  faint  flush  of  dawn 
is  in  the  east.  The  wdsserer  are  washing  oiF 
the  cabs;  a  helmeted  hauptmann  salutes 
lazily  as  we  pass,  and  we  drive  home  full  of 
the  intoxications  of  that  pagan  gaiety  which 
the  Viennese,  more  than  any  other  people, 
have  preserved  in  all  its  innocence,  its  sen- 
suous splendour,  its  spontaneity  and  youth. 


68     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

Bianca?  By  now  she  has  forgotten  with 
whom  she  came  to  the  dance.  Next  week 
my  name  will  be  but  one  of  her  innumerable 
memories  —  if,  indeed,  it  does  not  altogether 
pass  away.  For  Bianca  is  Vienna,  lavish 
and  joyous  and  buoyant  —  and  forgetful. 
I  danced  with  her  three  times,  but  my  three 
roses,  along  with  scores  of  others,  have  long 
since  been  lost  in  the  swirl  of  the  evening. 

I  wish  I  might  think  only  of  Bianca  as 
the  shadows  dissolve  from  the  streets  and  the 
grey  morning  light  strikes  the  great  steeple 
of  Stefans-Dom.  But  another  picture 
presents  itself.  I  see  a  little  French  girl, 
out  of  touch  with  all  the  merriment  around 
her,  sipping  her  Dubonnet  in  solitude  —  a 
forlorn  girl  with  pink  cheeks,  pale  blue  eyes 
and  hair  the  colour  of  wet  straw. 


MUNICH 


MUNICH 

T  ET  the  most  important  facts  come 
-■— i  first.  The  best  beer  in  Munich  is 
Spatenbrau ;  the  best  place  to  get  it  is  at  the 
Hof theatre  Cafe  in  the  Residenzstrasse ;  the 
best  time  to  drink  it  is  after  10  p.  m.,  and  the 
best  of  all  girls  to  serve  it  is  Fraulein  Sophie, 
that  tall  and  resilient  creature,  with  her  ap- 
petizing smile,  her  distinguished  bearing  and 
her  superbly  manicured  hands. 

I  have,  in  my  time,  sat  under  many  and 
many  superior  kellnerinen^  some  as  regal  as 
grand  duchesses,  some  as  demure  as  shop- 
lifters, some  as  graceful  as  prime  ballerini, 
but  none  reaching  so  high  a  general  level  of 
merit,  none  so  thoroughlj^  satisfying  to  eye 
and  soul  as  Fraulein  Sophie.  She  is  a  lady, 
every  inch  of  her,  a  lady  presenting  to  all 
gentlemanly  chents  the  ideal  blend  of  cordi- 

71 


72     EUROPE    AFTER   8:16 

ality  and  dignity,  and  she  serves  the  best 
beer  in  Christendom.  Take  away  that  beer, 
and  it  is  possible,  of  course,  that  Sophie 
would  lose  some  minute  granule  or  globule 
of  her  charm;  but  take  away  Sophie  and  I 
fear  the  beer  would  lose  even  more. 

In  fact,  I  know  it,  for  I  have  drunk  that 
same  beer  in  the  Spatenbraukeller  in  the 
Bayerstrasse,  at  all  hours  of  the  day  and 
night,  and  always  the  ultimate  thrill  was 
missing.  Good  beer,  to  be  sure,  and  a  hun- 
dred times  better  than  the  common  brews, 
even  in  Munich,  but  not  perfect  beer,  not 
beer  de  luxe,  not  super-beer.  It  is  the 
human  equation  that  counts,  in  the  hierhalle 
as  on  the  battlefield.  One  resents,  somehow 
a  kellnerin  with  the  figure  of  a  taxicab,  no 
matter  how  good  her  intentions  and  fluent 
her  technique,  just  as  one  resents  a  trained 
nurse  with  a  double  chin  or  a  glass  eye. 
When  a  personal  office  that  a  man  might 
perform,  or  even  an  intelhgent  machine,  is 
put  into  the  hands  of  a  woman,  it  is  put 


MUNICH  73 

there  simply  and  solely  because  the  woman 
can  bring  charm  to  it  and  irradiate  it  with 
romance.  If,  now,  she  fails  to  do  so  —  if 
she  brings,  not  charm,  not  beauty,  not  ro- 
mance, but  the  gross  curves  of  an  aurochs 
and  a  voice  of  brass  —  if  she  offers  bulk 
when  the  heart  cries  for  gi'ace  and  adenoids 
when  the  order  is  for  music,  then  the  whole 
thing  becomes  a  hissing  and  a  mocking,  and 
a  grey  fog  is  on  the  world. 

But  to  get  back  to  the  Hoftheatre  Cafe. 
It  stands,  as  I  have  said,  in  the  Residenz- 
strasse,  where  that  narrow  street  bulges  out 
into  the  Max-Joseph-platz,  and  facing  it, 
as  its  name  suggests,  is  the  Hoftheatre,  the 
most  solemn-looking  playhouse  in  Europe, 
but  the  scene  of  appalling  tone  debaucheries 
within.  The  supreme  idea  at  the  Hofthea- 
tre is  to  get  the  curtain  down  at  ten  o'clock. 
If  the  bill  happens  to  be  a  short  one,  say 
"Hansel  and  Gretel"  or  *' Elektra,"  the 
three  thumps  of  the  starting  mallet  may 
not  come  until  eight  o'clock  or  even  8:30, 


74     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

but  if  it  is  a  long  one,  say  "  Parsifal "  or 
"Les  Huguenots,"  a  beginning  is  made  far 
back  in  the  afternoon.  Always  the  end  ar- 
rives at  ten,  with  perhaps  a  moment  or  two 
leeway  in  one  direction  or  the  other.  And 
two  minutes  afterward,  without  further 
ceremony  or  delay,  the  truly  epicurean 
auditor  has  his  feet  under  the  mahogany  at 
the  Hoftheatre  Cafe  across  the  platz,  with 
a  seidel  of  that  incomparable  brew  tilted 
elegantly  tow^ard  his  face  and  his  glad  eyes 
smiling  at  Fraulein  Sophie  through  the 
glass  bottom. 

How  many  women  could  stand  that  test? 
How  many  could  bear  the  ribald  distortions 
of  that  lens-like  seidel  bottom  and  yet  keep 
their  charm?  How  many  thus  caricatured 
and  vivisected,  could  command  this  free 
reading  notice  from  a  casual  American,  dic- 
tating against  time  and  space  to  a  red- 
haired  stenogi'apher,  three  thousand  and 
five  hundred  miles  away?  And  yet  Sophie 
does  it,  and  not  only  Sophie,  but  also  Frida, 


MUNICH  75 

Elsa,  Lili,  Kunigunde,  Martchen,  Therese 
and  Lottchen,  her  confreres  and  aides,  and 
even  little  Rosa,  who  is  half  Bavarian  and 
half  Japanese,  and  one  of  the  prettiest  girls 
in  Munich,  in  or  out  of  uniform.  It  is  a 
pleasure  to  say  a  kind  word  for  little  Rosa, 
with  her  coal  black  hair  and  her  slanting 
eyes,  for  she  is  too  fragile  a  fraulein  to  be 
toting  around  those  gigantic  German 
schnitzels  and  bifsteks,  those  mighty  double 
portions  of  sauerbraten  and  rostbif,  those 
staggering  drinking  urns,  overballasted  and 
awash. 

Let  us  not,  however,  be  unjust  to  the  es- 
timable Herr  Wirt  of  the  Hoftheatre  Cafe, 
with  his  pneumatic  tread,  his  chaste  side 
whiskers  and  his  long-tailed  coat,  for  his 
drinking  urns,  when  all  is  said  and  done,  are 
quite  the  smallest  in  Munich.  And  not 
only  the  smallest,  but  also  the  shapeliest. 
In  the  Hofbrauhaus  and  in  the  open  air 
bierkneipen  (for  instance,  the  Mathaser 
joint,  of  which  more  anon)  one  drinks  out 


76     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

of  earthen  cylinders  which  resemble  noth- 
ing so  much  as  the  gaunt  towers  of  Munich 
cathedral;  and  elsewhere  the  orthodox  gob- 
let is  a  glass  edifice  following  the  lines  of  an 
old-fashioned  silver  water  pitcher  —  you 
know  the  sort  the  innocently  criminal  used 
to  give  as  wedding  presents!  —  but  at  the 
Hoftheatre  there  is  a  vessel  of  special  de- 
sign, hexagonal  in  cross  section  and  un- 
usually graceful  in  general  aspect.  On  top, 
a  pewter  hd,  ground  to  an  optical  fit  and 
highly  polished  —  by  Sophie,  Rosa  et  cd, 
poor  girls!  To  starboard,  a  stout  handle, 
apparently  of  reinforced  onyx.  Above  the 
handle,  and  attached  to  the  Hd,  a  metal 
flange  or  thumbpiece.  Grasp  the  handle, 
press  your  thumb  on  the  thumbpiece  —  and 
presto,  the  lid  heaves  up.  And  then,  to  the 
tune  of  a  Strauss  waltz,  played  passion- 
ately by  tone  artists  in  oleaginous  dress 
suits,  down  goes  the  Spatenbrau  —  gurgle, 
gurgle  —  burble,  burble  —  down  goes  the 
Spatenbrau  —  exquisite,      ineff'able!  —  to 


MUNICH  77 

drench  the  heart  in  its  nut  brown  flood  and 
fill  the  arteries  with  its  benign  alkaloids  and 
antitoxins. 

Well,  well,  maybe  I  grow  too  eloquent! 
Such  memories  loose  and  craze  the  tongue. 
A  man  pulls  himself  up  suddenly,  to  find 
that  he  has  been  vulgar.  If  so  here,  so  be 
it!  I  refuse  to  plead  to  the  indictment; 
sentence  me  and  be  hanged  to  you!  I  am 
by  nature  a  vulgar  fellow.  I  prefer  "  Tom 
Jones  "  to  "  The  Rosary,"  Rabelais  to  the 
Elsie  books,  the  Old  Testament  to  the  New, 
the  expurgated  parts  of  "  Gulliver's  Trav- 
els "  to  those  that  are  left.  I  delight  in  beef 
stews,  Hmericks,  burlesque  shows,  New 
York  City  and  the  music  of  Haydn,  that 
beery.and  delightful  old  rascal!  I  swear  in 
the  presence  of  ladies  and  archdeacons. 
When  the  mercury  is  above  ninety-five  I 
dine  in  my  shirt  sleeves  and  write  poetry 
naked.  I  associate  habitually  with  drama- 
tists, bartenders,  medical  men  and  musi- 
cians.    I   once,   in   early   youth,   kissed   a 


78     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

waitress  at  Dennett's.  So  don't  accuse  me 
of  vulgarity ;  I  admit  it  and  flout  you.  Not, 
of  course,  that  I  have  no  pruderies,  no  fas- 
tidious metes  and  bounds.  Far  from  it. 
Babies,  for  example,  are  too  vulgar  for  me; 
I  cannot  bring  myself  to  touch  them.  And 
actors.  And  evangelists.  And  the  obste- 
trical anecdotes  of  ancient  dames.  But  in 
general,  as  I  have  said,  I  joy  in  vulgarity, 
whether  it  take  the  form  of  divorce  proceed- 
ings or  of  "  Tristan  und  Isolde,"  of  an  Odd 
Fellows'  funeral  or  of  Munich  beer. 

But  here,  perhaps,  I  go  too  far  again. 
That  is  to  say,  I  have  no  right  to  admit  that 
Munich  beer  is  vulgar.  On  the  contrary,  it 
is  my  obvious  duty  to  deny  it,  and  not  only 
to  deny  it  but  also  to  support  my  denial 
with  an  overwhelming  mass  of  evidence  and 
a  shrill  cadenza  of  casuistrj''.  But  the  time 
and  the  place,  unluckily  enough,  are  not 
quite  fit  for  the  dialectic,  and  so  I  content 
myself  with  a  few  pertinent  observations. 
Imprimis,  a  thing  that  is  unique,   incom- 


MUNICH  79 

parable,  sui  generis,  cannot  be  vulgar. 
Munich  beer  is  unique,  incomparable,  sui 
generis.  More,  it  is  consummate,  trans- 
cendental, uhernatiirlich.  Therefore  it 
cannot  be  vulgar.  Secondly,  the  folk  who 
drink  it  day  after  day  do  not  die  of  vulgar 
diseases.  Turn  to  the  subhead  Todesur- 
sachen  in  the  instructive  Statistischer  Mon~ 
atsbericht  der  Stadt  Milnclien,  and  you  will 
find  records  of  few  if  any  deaths  from  de- 
lirium tremens,  boils,  hookworm,  smallpox, 
distemper,  measles  or  what  the  Monatshe- 
richt  calls  "  liver  sickness."  The  ISIiin- 
cheners  perish  more  elegantly,  more  charm- 
ingly than  that.  When  their  time  comes  it 
is  gout  that  fetches  them,  or  appendicitis,  or 
neurasthenia,  or  angina  pectoris;  or  per- 
chance they  cut  their  throats. 

Thirdly,  and  to  make  it  short,  lastly,  the 
late  Henrik  Ibsen,  nourished  upon  Munich 
beer,  wrote  "  Hedda  Gabler,"  not  to  men- 
tion "  Rosmershohn "  and  "  The  Lady 
from  the  Sea  " —  wrote  them  in  his  fiat  in 


80     EUROPE   AFTER   8:15 

the  Maximilianstrasse  overlooking  the  pal- 
ace and  the  afternoon  promenaders,  in  the 
late  eighties  of  the  present,  or  Christian  era 
—  wrote  them  there  and  then  took  them  to 
the  Cafe  Luitpold,  in  the  Briennerstrasse, 
to  ponder  them,  pohsh  them  and  make  them 
perfect.  I  myself  have  sat  in  old  Henrik's 
chair  and  victualed  from  the  table.  It  is 
far  back  in  the  main  hall  of  the  cafe,  to  the 
right  as  you  come  in,  and  hidden  from  the 
incomer  by  the  glass  vestibule  which  guards 
the  pantry.  Ibsen  used  to  appear  every 
afternoon  at  three  o'clock,  to  drink  his  vahze 
of  Lowenbrau  and  read  the  papers.  The 
latter  done,  he  would  sit  in  silence,  think- 
ing, thinking,  planning,  planning.  Not 
often  did  he  say  a  word,  even  to  Fraulein 
Mizzi,  his  favourite  hellnerin.  So  taciturn 
was  he,  in  truth,  that  his  rare  utterances 
were  carefully  entered  in  the  archives  of  the 
cafe  and  are  now  preserved  there.  By  the 
courtesy  of  Dr.  Adolph  Himmelheber, 
the  present  curator,  I  am  permitted  to  tran- 


MUNICH  81 

scribe  a  few,  the  imperfect  German  of  the 
poet  being  preserved: 

November  18,  1889,  4:15  P.  m. —  Gieht  es 
kein  Feuer  in  diese  verfluchte  Bierstube? 
Meine  Filsse  sind  so  halt  wie  Eiszapfen! 

April  12,  1890,  5:20  v.M.—  Der  Kerl  is 
verrilckt!  (Said  of  an  American  who  en- 
tered with  the  stars  and  stripes  flying  from 
his  hat.) 

May  22,  1890,  4:40  v,m,—  Sie  sind  so 
eselhaft  wie  ein  Schauspielei'!  (To  an  as- 
sistant Herr  Wirt  who  brought  him  a 
Sociahst  paper  in  mistake  for  the  London 
Times.) 

Now  and  then  the  great  man  would  con- 
descend to  play  a  game  of  billiards  in  the 
hall  to  the  rear,  usually  with  some  total 
stranger.  He  would  j)oint  out  the  stranger 
to  Fraulein  Mizzi  and  she  would  carry  his 
card.  The  game  would  proceed,  as  a  rule, 
in  utter  silence.  But  it  was  for  the  Lowen- 
brau  and  not  for  the  billiards  that  Ibsen  came 
to  the  Luitpold,  for  the  Lowenbriiu  and 


82     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

the  high  flights  of  soul  that  it  engendered. 
He  had  no  great  liking  for  INIunich  as  a  city ; 
his  prime  favourite  was  always  Vienna,  with 
Rome  second.  But  he  knew  that  the  in- 
comparable malt  liquor  of  Munich  was  full 
of  the  inspiration  that  he  needed,  and  so  he 
kept  near  it,  not  to  bathe  in  it,"  not  to  frivol 
with  it,  but  to  take  it  discreetly  and  pro- 
phylacticalty,  and  as  the  exigencies  of  his  art 
demanded. 

Ibsen's  inherent  fastidiousness,  a  quality 
which  urged  him  to  spend  hours  shining  his 
shoes,  was  revealed  by  his  choice  of  the  Cafe 
Luitpold,  for  of  all  the  cafes  in  Munich  the 
Luitpold  is  undoubtedly  the  most  elegant. 
Its  walls  are  adorned  with  frescoes  by  Al- 
brecht  Hildebrandt.  The  ceiling  of  the  main 
hall  is  supported  by  columns  of  coloured 
marble.  The  tables  are  of  carved  mahog- 
any. The  forks  and  spoons,  before  Ameri- 
cans began  to  steal  them,  were  of  real  sil- 
ver. The  chocolate  with  whipped  cream, 
served    late   in   the   afternoon,    is    famous 


MUNICH  83 

throughout  Europe.  The  Herr  Wirt  has 
the  suave  sneak  of  John  Drew  and  is  a  privy 
councillor  to  the  King  of  Bavaria.  All  the 
tables  along  the  east  wall,  which  is  one  vast 
mirror,  are  reserved  from  8  p.  m.  to  2  a.  m. 
nightly  by  the  faculty  of  the  University  of 
Munich,  which  there  entertains  the  eminent 
scientists  who  constantly  visit  the  city.  No 
orchestra  arouses  the  baser  passions  with 
"  Wiener  Blut."  The  place  has  calm, 
aloofness,  intellectuahty,  aristocracy,  dis- 
tinction. It  was  the  scene  foreordained  for 
the  hatching  of  "  Hedda  Gabler." 

But  don't  imagine  that  Munich,  when  it 
comes  to  elegance,  must  stand  or  fall  with 
the  Luitpold.  Far  from  it,  indeed.  There 
are  other  cafes  of  noble  and  elevating  qual- 
ity in  that  delectable  town  —  plenty  of 
them,  you  may  be  sure.  For  example,  the 
Odeon,  across  the  street  from  the  Luitpold, 
a  place  lavish  and  luxurious,  but  with  a  cer- 
tain touch  of  dogginess,  a  taste  of  salt. 
The  piccolo  who  lights  your  cigar  and  ac- 


84     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

cepts  your  five  pfennigs  at  the  Odeon  is  an 
Ethiopian  dwarf.  Do  you  sense  the  ro- 
mance, the  exotic  diablerie,  the  suggestion 
of  Levantine  mystery?  And  somewhat 
Levantine,  too,  are  the  ladies  who  sit  upon 
the  plush  benches  along  the  wall  and  take 
Russian  cigarettes  with  their  kirschenwasser. 
Not  that  the  atmosphere  is  frankly  one  of 
Sin.  No!  No!  The  Odeon  is  no  cabaret. 
A  leg  flung  in  the  air  would  bring  the  Herr 
Wirt  at  a  gallop,  you  may  be  sure  —  or,  at 
any  rate,  his  apoplectic  corpse.  In  all  New 
York,  I  dare  say,  there  is  no  pubUc  eating 
house  so  near  to  the  far-flung  outposts,  the 
Galapagos  Islands  of  virtue.  But  one 
somehow  feels  that  for  Munich,  at  least,  the 
Odeon  is  just  a  bit  tolerant,  just  a  bit  philo- 
sophical, just  a  bit  Bohemian.  One  even 
imagines  taking  an  American  show  girl 
there  without  being  warned  (by  a  curt  note 
in  one's  serviette)  that  the  head  waiter's 
family  lives  in  the  house. 

Again,    pursuing    these    haunts    of    the 


MUNICH  85 

baroque  and  arabesque,  there  is  the  restau- 
rant of  the  Hotel  Vier  Jahreszeiten,  a  mas- 
terpiece of  the  Munich  glass  cutters  and  up- 
holsterers. It  is  in  the  very  heart  of  things, 
with  the  royal  riding  school  directly  oppo- 
site, the  palace  a  block  away  and  the  green 
of  the  Englischer  Garten  glimmering  down 
the  street.  Here,  of  a  fine  afternoon,  the  so- 
ciety is  the  best  between  Vienna  and  Paris. 
One  may  share  the  vinegar  cruet  with  a 
countess,  and  see  a  general  of  cavalry  eat 
peas  with  a  knife  (hollow  ground,  like  a 
razor;  a  Bavarian  trick!)  and  stand  aghast 
while  a  great  tone  artist  dusts  his  shoes  with 
a  napkin,  and  observe  a  Russian  grand  duke 
at  the  herculean  labour  of  drinking  himself 
to  death. 

The  Vier  Jahreszeiten  is  no  place  for  the 
common  people;  such  trade  is  not  encour- 
aged. The  dominant  note  of  the  establish- 
ment is  that  of  proud  retirement,  of  elegant 
sanctuary.  One  enters,  not  from  the  garish 
Maximilianstrasse,  with  its  motor  cars  and 


86     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

its  sinners,  but  from  the  Marstallstrasse,  a 
sedate  and  aristocratic  side  street.  The 
Vier  Jahreszeiten,  in  its  time,  has  given  food, 
alcohol  and  lodgings  for  the  night  to  twenty 
ero^\7ied  heads  and  a  whole  shipload  of  les- 
ser magnificoes,  and  despite  the  rise  of  other 
hotels  it  retains  its  ancient  supremacy.  It 
is  the  peer  of  Shepheard's  at  Cairo,  of  the 
Cecil  in  London,  of  the  old  Inglaterra  at 
Havana,  of  the  St.  Charles  at  New  Orleans. 
It  is  one  of  the  distinguished  hotels  of  the 
world. 

I  could  give  you  a  long  list  of  other  Mu- 
nich restaurants  of  a  kingly  order  —  the 
great  breakfast  room  of  the  Bayrischer  Hof, 
with  its  polyglot  waiters  and  its  amazing 
repertoire  of  English  jams;  the  tea  and 
liquor  atelier  of  the  same  hostelry,  with  its 
high  dome  and  its  sheltering  palms;  the 
pretty  little  open  air  restaurant  of  the 
Kiinstlerhaus  in  the  Lenbachplatz;  the  huge 
catacomb  of  the  Rathaus,  with  its  mediseval 
arches  and  its  vintage  wines;  the  lovely  al 


MUNICH  B7 

fresco  cafe  on  Isar  Island,  with  the  green 
cascades  of  the  Isar  winging  on  lazy  after- 
noons; the  cafe  in  the  Hofgarten,  gay  with 
birds  and  lovers;  that  in  the  Tiergarten, 
from  the  terrace  of  which  one  watches  lions 
and  tigers  gamboling  in  the  woods;  and  so 
on,  and  so  on.  Tiiere  is  even,  I  hear,  a  tem- 
perance restaurant  in  JMunich,  the  Jung- 
brunnen  in  the  Arcostrasse,  where  water  is 
sei-ved  with  meals,  but  that  is  only  rumour. 
I  myself  have  never  visited  it,  nor  do  I  know 
any  one  who  has. 

All  this,  however,  is  far  from  the  point. 
I  am  here  hired  to  discourse  of  JMunich  beer, 
and  not  of  vintage  wines,  bogus  cocktails, 
afternoon  chocolate  and  well  water.  We 
are  on  a  beeriad.  Avaunt,  ye  grapes,  ye 
maraschino  cherries,  ye  puerile  HoO! 

And  so,  resuming  that  beeriad,  it  appears 
that  we  are  once  again  in  the  Hoftheatre 
Cafe  in  the  Residenzstrasse,  and  that 
Fraulein  Sophie,  that  pleasing  creature,  has 
just   arrived   with   two   ewers   of   Spaten- 


88     EUROPE    AFTJ:R    8:15 

brau  —  two  ewers  fresh  from  the  wood  — 
woody,  nutty,  incomparable !  Ah,  those  ele- 
gantly manicured  hands!  All,  that  Mona 
Lisa  smile!  Ah,  that  so  graceful  waist! 
Ah,  malt!  Ah,  hops!  Ach,  Miinchen,  wie 
hist  du  so  schon! 

But  even  Paradise  has  its  nuisances,  its 
scandals,  its  lacks.  The  Hoftheatre  Cafe, 
alas,  is  not  the  place  to  eat  sauerkraut  — 
not  the  place,  at  any  rate,  to  eat  sauerkraut 
de  luxe,  the  supreme  and  singular  master- 
piece of  the  Bavarian  uplands,  the  perfect 
grass  embalmed  to  perfection.  The  place 
for  that  is  the  Pschorrbrau  in  the  Neuhau- 
serstrasse,  a  devious  and  confusing  journey, 
down  past  the  Pompeian  post  office,  into 
the  narrow  Schrammerstrasse,  around  the 
old  cathedral,  and  then  due  south  to 
the  Neuhauserstrasse.  Sapperment!  The 
TsTeuhauserstrasse  is  here  called  the  Kauf- 
ingerstrasse !  Well,  well,  don't  let  it  fool 
you.  A  bit  further  to  the  east  it  is 
called  the  Marienplatz,  and  further  still  the 


MUNICH  89 

Thai,  and  then  the  Isarthorplatz,  and  then 
the  Zweibriickenstrasse,  and  then  the  Isar- 
briicke,  and  then  the  Ludwigbriicke,  and 
finally,  beyond  the  river,  the  Gasteig  or  the 
Rosenhennerstrasse,  according  as  one  takes 
its  left  branch  or  its  right. 

But  don't  be  dismayed  by  all  that  ver- 
satility. Munich  streets,  like  London 
streets,  change  their  names  every  two  or 
three  blocks.  Once  you  arrive  between  the 
two  mediaeval  arches  of  the  Karlsthor  and 
the  Sparkasse,  you  are  in  the  Neuhauser- 
strasse,  whatever  the  name  on  the  street 
sign,  and  if  you  move  westward  toward  the 
Karlsthor  you  will  come  inevitably  to  the 
Pschorrbrau,  and  within  you  will  find 
Fraulein  Tilde  (to  whom  my  regards),  who 
will  laugh  at  your  German  with  a  fine  show 
of  pearly  teeth  and  the  extreme  vibra- 
tion of  her  195  pounds.  Tilde,  in  these  god- 
less states,  would  be  called  fat.  But  ob- 
serve her  in  the  Pschorrbrau,  mellowed  by 
that  superb  malt,  glorified  by  that  consum- 


90     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

mate  kraut,  and  you  will  blush  to  think  her 
more  than  plump. 

I  give  you  the  Pschorrbrau  as  the  one  best 
eating  bet  in  IMunich  —  and  not  forgetting, 
by  any  means,  the  Luitpold,  the  Rathaus,  the 
Odeon  and  all  the  other  gilded  hells  of  vic- 
tualry  to  northward.  Imagine  it:  every 
skein  of  sauerkraut  is  cooked  three  times  be- 
fore it  reaches  your  plate!  Once  in  plain 
water,  once  in  Rhine  wine  and  once  in 
melted  snow!  A  dish,  in  this  benighted  re- 
public, for  stevedores  and  yodlers,  a  coarse 
fee  for  violoncellists,  barbers  and  reporters 
for  the  Staats-Zeitung  —  but  the  delight,  at 
the  Pschorrbrau,  of  diplomats,  the  literati 
and  doctors  of  philosophy.  I  myself,  eat- 
ing it  three  times  a  day,  to  the  accompani- 
ment of  schweinersrippen  and  honensalat, 
have  composed  triolets  in  the  Norwegian 
language,  a  feat  not  matched  by  Bjom- 
stjerne  Bjornson  himself.  And  I  once  met 
an  American  medical  man,  in  Munich  to  sit 
under  the  learned  Prof.  Dr.  Miiller,  who  ate 


mu:n^ich  91 

no  less  than  five  portions  of  it  nightly,  after 
his  twelve  long  hours  of  clinical  prodding 
and  hacking.  He  found  it  more  nourish- 
ing, he  told  me,  than  pure  albumen,  and 
more  stimulating  to  the  j  added  nerves  than 
laparotomy. 

But  to  many  Americans,  of  course,  sauer- 
kraut does  not  appeal.  Prejudiced  against 
the  dish  by  ridicule  and  innuendo,  they  are 
unable  to  differentiate  between  good  and 
bad,  and  so  it's  useless  to  send  them  to  this 
or  that  ausschank.  Well,  let  them  then  go 
to  the  Pschorrbrau  and  order  bifstek  from 
the  grill,  at  M.  1.20  the  ration.  There  may 
be  tenderer  and  more  savoury  bif steks  in  the 
world,  bifsteks  which  sizzle  more  seductively 
upon  red  hot  plates,  bifsteks  with  more  pro- 
teids  and  manganese  in  them,  bifsteks  more 
humane  to  ancient  and  hyperesthetic  teeth, 
bifsteks  from  nobler  cattle,  more  deftly  cut, 
more  passionately  grilled,  more  romanti- 
cally served  —  but  not,  believe  me,  for 
M.  1.20!     Think  of  it:  a  cut  of  tenderloin 


92     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

for  M.  1.20  — say,  28.85364273X  cents! 
For  a  side  order  of  sauerkraut,  forty 
pfennigs  extra.  For  potatoes,  twenty- 
five  pfennigs.  For  a  mass  of  dunhle, 
thirty-two  pfennigs.  In  all,  M.  2.17  —  an 
odd  mill  or  so  more  or  less  than  fifty-two 
cents.  A  square  meal,  perfectly  cooked, 
washed  down  with  perfect  beer  and  served 
perfectly  by  Fraulein  Tilde  —  and  all  for 
the  price  of  a  shampoo! 

From  the  Pschorrbrau,  if  the  winds  be 
fair,  the  beeriad  takes  us  westward  along 
the  Neuhauserstrasse  a  distance  of  eighty 
feet  and  six  inches,  and  behold,  we  are  at 
the  August inerbrau.  Good  beer  —  a  trifle 
pale,  perhaps,  and  without  much  grip  to  it, 
but  still  good  beer.  After  all,  however, 
there  is  something  lacking  here.  Or,  to  be 
more  accurate,  something  jars.  The  or- 
chestra plays  Grieg  and  Moszkowski;  a  smell 
of  chocolate  is  in  the  air;  that  tall,  pink  lieu- 
tenant over  there,  with  his  cropped  head  and 
his  outstanding  ears,  his  backfisch  waist  and 


MUNICH  93 

his  mudscow  feet  —  that  military  gargoyle, 
half  lout  and  half  fop,  offends  the  roving 
eye.  No  doubt  a  handsome  man,  by  Ger- 
man standards  —  even,  perhaps  a  cele- 
brated seducer,  a  soldier  with  a  future  — 
but  the  mere  sight  of  him  suffices  to  paralyse 
an  American  esophagus.  Besides,  there  is 
the  smell  of  chocolate,  sweet,  sickly,  ef- 
feminate, and  at  two  in  the  afternoon! 
Again,  there  is  the  music  of  Grieg,  clammy, 
clinging,  creepy.  Away  to  the  Mathaser- 
brau,  two  long  blocks  by  taxi!  From  the 
Munich  of  Berlinish  decadence  and  Prus- 
sian epaulettes  to  the  Munich  of  honest 
Bavarians!  From  chocolate  and  maca- 
roons to  pretzels  and  white  radishes !  From 
Grieg  to  "  Lachende  Liebe!"  From  a 
boudoir  to  an  inn  yard !  From  pale  beer  in 
fragile  glasses  to  red  beer  in  earthen  pots  I 

The  Mathaserbrau  is  up  a  narrow  alley, 
and  that  alley  is  always  full  of  Miincheners 
going  in.  Follow  the  crowd,  and  one  comes 
presently  to  a  row  of  booths  set  up  by  rad- 


94     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

ish  sellers  —  ancient  dames  of  incredible 
diameter,  gnarled  old  peasants  in  tapestry- 
waistcoats  and  country  boots;  veterans,  one 
half  ventures,  of  the  Napoleonic  wars,  even 
of  the  wars  of  Frederick  the  Great.  A  ten- 
pfennig  piece  buys  a  noble  white  radish,  and 
the  seller  slices  it  free  of  charge,  slices  it  with 
a  silver  revolving  blade  into  two  score  thin 
schnitzels,  and  puts  salt  between  each  ad- 
jacent pair.  A  radish  so  sliced  and  salted 
is  the  perfect  complement  of  this  dark 
Mathaser  beer.  One  nibbles  and  drinks, 
drinks  and  nibbles,  and  so  slides  the  lazy 
afternoon.  The  scene  is  an  incredible,  play- 
house courtyard,  with  shrubs  in  tubs  and 
tables  painted  scarlet;  a  fit  setting  for  the 
first  act  of  "  Manon."  But  instead  of  chor- 
isters in  short  skirts,  tripping,  the  whoop-la 
and  boosting  the  landlord's  wine,  one  feasts 
the  eye  upon  Mlinchenese  of  a  rhinocerous 
fatness,  dropsical  and  gargantuan  creatures, 
bisons  in  skirts,  who  pass  laboriously 
among  the  bibuli,  offering  bunches  of  little 


MUNICH  95 

pretzels  strung  upon  red  strings.  Six 
pretzels  for  ten  pfennigs.  A  five-pfennig 
tip  for  Frau  Dickleibig,  and  she  brings  you 
the  FUegende  Blatter^  Le  Eire,  the  IMunich 
or  Berlin  papers,  whatever  you  want.  A 
drowsy,  hedonistic,  easy-going  place.  Not 
much  talk,  not  much  ratthng  of  crockery, 
not  much  card  plajdng.  The  mountain,  one 
guesses,  of  Munich  meditation.  The  incu- 
bator of  Munich  gemiltllchkeit. 

Upstairs  there  is  the  big  Mathiiser  hall, 
with  room  for  three  thousand  visitors  of  an 
evening,  a  great  resort  for  Bavarian  high 
privates  and  their  best  girls,  the  scene  of 
honest  and  public  courting.  Between  the 
Bavarian  high  private  and  the  Bavarian 
lieutenant  all  the  diiferences  are  in  favour 
of  the  former.  He  wears  no  corsets,  he  is 
innocent  of  the  monocle,  he  sticks  to  native 
beer.  A  man  of  amour  like  his  officer,  he 
disdains  the  elaborate  winks,  the  complex 
diahleries  of  that  superior  being,  and  con- 
fines himself  to  open  hugging.     One  sees 


96     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

him,  in  these  great  beer  halls,  with  his  arm 
around  his  Lizzie.  Anon  he  arouses  him- 
self from  his  coma  of  love  to  offer  her  a  sip 
from  his  mass  or  to  whisper  some  bovine 
nothing  into  her  ear.  Before  they  depart 
for  the  evening  he  escorts  her  to  the  huge 
sign,  "  Filr  Damen/'  and  waits  patiently 
while  she  goes  in  and  fixes  her  mussed  hair. 
The  Bavarians  have  no  false  pruderies, 
no  nasty  little  nicenesses.  There  is,  indeed, 
no  race  in  Europe  more  innocent,  more 
frank,  more  clean-minded.  Postcards  of  a 
homely  and  harmless  vulgarity  are  for  sale 
in  every  Munich  stationer's  shop,  but  the 
connoisseur  looks  in  vain  for  the  studied  in- 
decencies of  Paris,  the  appalling  obscenities 
of  the  Swiss  towns.  Munich  has  little  to 
show  the  American  Sunday  school  superin- 
tendent on  the  loose.  The  ideal  there  is  not 
a  sharp  and  stinging  deviltry,  a  swift 
massacre  of  all  the  commandments,  but  a 
Hquid  and  tolerant  geniality,  a  great  for- 
giveness.    Beer  does   not  refine,   perhaps. 


MUNICH  97 

but  at  any  rate  it  mellows.     No  Miinchener 
ever  threw  a  stone. 

And  so,  passing  swiftly  over  the  Burger- 
brau  in  the  Kaufingerstrasse,  the  Hacker- 
brau,  the  Kreuzbrau,  and  the  Kochelbrau, 
all  hospitable  lokale,  selling  pure  beer  in 
honest  measures;  and  over  the  various 
Pilsener  fountains  and  the  agency  for 
Vienna  beer  —  dish- watery  stuff !  —  in  the 
Maximilianstrasse ;  and  over  the  various 
summer  heller  on  the  heights  of  Au  and 
Haidhausen  across  the  river,  with  their 
spacious  teiTaces  and  their  ancient  tradi- 
tions—  passing  over  all  these  tempting 
sanctuaries  of  mass  and  kellnerin^  we  arrive 
finally  at  the  Lowenbraukeller  and  the  Hof- 
brauhaus,  which  is  quite  a  feat  of  arriving, 
it  must  be  granted,  for  the  one  is  in  the 
Nymphenburgerstrasse,  in  Northwest  Mu- 
nich, and  the  other  is  in  the  Platzl,  not  two 
blocks  from  the  royal  palace,  and  the  dis- 
tance from  the  one  to  the  other  is  a  good 
mile  and  a  half. 


98     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

The  Lowenbrau  first  —  a  rococo  castle 
sprawling  over  a  whole  city  block,  and  with 
accommodations  in  its  "  halls,  galleries, 
loges,  verandas,  terraces,  outlying  garden 
promenades  and  beer  rooms"  (I  quote  the 
official  guide)  for  eight  thousand  drinkers. 
A  lordly  and  impressive  establishment  is 
this  Lowenbrau,  an  edifice  of  countless 
towers,  buttresses,  minarets  and  dungeons. 
It  was  designed  by  the  learned  Prof.  Albert 
Schmidt,  one  of  the  creators  of  modern 
Munich,  and  when  it  was  opened,  on  June 
14,  1883,  all  the  military  bands  in  Munich 
played  at  once  in  the  great  hall,  and  the 
royal  family  of  Bavaria  turned  out  in  state 
coaches,  and  100,000  eager  Miincheners 
tried  to  fight  their  way  in. 

How  large  that  great  hall  may  be  I  don't 
know,  but  I  venture  to  guess  that  it  seats 
four  thousand  people  —  not  huddled  to- 
gether, as  a  theatre  seats  them,  but  comfort- 
ably, loosely,  spaciously,  with  plenty  of  room 
between  the  tables  for  the  250  hellnerinen  to 


MUNICH  99 

navigate  safely  with  their  cargoes  of  Lowen- 
brau.  Four  nights  a  week  a  mihtary  band 
plays  in  this  hall  or  a  mdnnerchor  rowels  the 
air  with  song,  and  there  is  an  admission  fee 
of  thirty  pfennigs  (7/i  cents).  One 
night  I  heard  the  band  of  the  second  Bava- 
rian (Crown  Prince's)  Regiment,  playing 
as  an  orchestra,  go  through  a  programme 
that  would  have  done  credit  to  the  New 
York  philharmonic.  A  young  violinist  in 
corporal's  stripes  hfted  the  crowd  to  its  feet 
with  the  slow  movement  of  the  Tschaikow- 
sky  concerto;  the  band  itself  began  with 
Wagner's  "  Siegfried  Idyl  "  and  ended  with 
Strauss's  "  Rosen  aus  dem  Siiden,"  a  su- 
perb waltz,  magnificently  perfonned. 
Three  hours  of  first-rate  music  for  7^ 
cents!  And  a  mass  of  Lowenbrau,  twice 
the  size  of  the  seidel  sold  in  this  country  at 
twenty  cents,  for  fortj^  pfennigs  (9^ 
cents) !  An  inviting  and  appetizing  spot, 
believe  me.  A  place  to  stretch  your  legs. 
A  temple  of  Lethe.     There,  when  my  days 


100     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

of  moneylust  are  over,  I  go  to  chew  my 
memories  and  dream  my  dreams  and  listen 
to  my  arteries  hardening. 

By  taxicab  down  the  wide  Brienner- 
strasse,  past  the  Luitpold  and  the  Odeon,  to 
the  Ludwigstrasse,  gay  with  its  after-the- 
opera  crowds,  and  then  to  the  left  into  the 
Residenzstrasse,  past  the  Hoftheatre  and 
its  cafe  (ah,  Sophie,  thou  angel!),  and  so 
to  the  Maximilianstrasse,  to  the  Neuthurm- 
strasse,  and  at  last,  with  a  sharp  turn,  into 
the  Platzl. 

The  Hofbrauhaus!  One  hears  it  from 
afar;  a  loud  buzzing,  the  rattle  of  mass  lids, 
the  sputter  of  the  released  dunkle,  the  sharp 
cries  of  pretzel  and  radish  sellers,  the 
scratching  of  matches,  the  shuffling  of  feet, 
the  eternal  gurgling  of  the  plain  people. 
Xo  palace  this,  for  all  its  towering  battle- 
ments and  the  frescos  by  Ferdinand  Wag- 
ner in  the  great  hall  upstairs,  but  drinking 
butts  for  them  that  labour  and  are  heavy 
laden:  station    porter,    teamsters,    servant 


MUNICH  101 

girls,     soldiers,     bricklayers,     blacksmiths, 
tinners,  sweeps. 

There  sits  the  fair  lady  who  gathers  cigar 
stumps  from  the  platz  in  front  of  the  Bay- 
erischer  Hof,  still  in  her  green  hat  of  labour, 
but  now  with  an  earthen  cylinder  of  Hof- 
brau  in  her  hands.  The  gentleman  beside 
her,  obviously  wooing  her,  is  third  fireman 
at  the  same  hotel.  At  the  next  table,  a 
squad  of  yokels  just  in  from  the  oberland, 
in  their  short  jackets  and  their  hobnailed 
boots.  Beyond,  a  noisy  meeting  of  Social- 
ists, a  rehearsal  of  some  liedertafel,  a  family 
reunion  of  four  generations,  a  beer  party  of 
gay  young  bloods  from  the  gas  works,  a 
conference  of  the  executive  committee  of 
the  horse  butchers'  union.  Every  second 
drinker  has  brought  his  lunch  wrapped  in 
newspaper;  half  a  hlutwurst,  two  radishes, 
an  onion,  a  heel  of  rye  bread.  The  debris 
of  such  lunches  covers  the  floor.  One  wades 
through  escaped  beer,  among  floating 
islands  of  radish  top  and  newspaper.     Chil- 


102     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

dren  go  overboard  and  are  succoured  with 
shouts.  Leviathans  of  this  underground 
lake,  JLusitanias  of  beer,  Pantagruels  of  the 
Hofbrauhaus,  colhde,  draw  off,  colHde 
again  and  are  wrecked  in  the  narrow  chan- 
nels. ...  A  great  puffing  and  blowing. 
Stranded  craft  on  eveiy  bench.  .  .  .  Noses 
like  cigar  bands. 

No  waitresses  here.  Each  drinker  for 
himself!  You  go  to  the  long  shelf,  select 
your  mass,  wash  it  at  the  spouting  faucet 
and  fall  into  line.  Behind  the  rail  the 
zahlmeiste?'  takes  your  twenty-eight  pfen- 
nigs and  pushes  your  mass  along  the 
counter.  Then  the  perspiring  bierbischof 
fills  it  from  the  naked  keg,  and  you  carry  it 
to  the  table  of  your  choice,  or  drink  it  stand- 
ing up  and  at  one  suffocating  gulp,  or  take 
it  out  into  the  yard,  to  wrestle  with  it  be- 
neath the  open  sky.  Roughnecks  enter 
eternally  with  fresh  kegs;  the  thud  of  the 
mallet  never  ceases;  the  rude  clamour  of 
the  bung-starter  is  as  the  rattle  of  depart- 


MUNICH  103 

ing  time  itself.  Huge  damsels  in  dirty 
aprons  —  retired  hellnerinen,  too  bulky, 
even,  for  that  trade  of  human  battleships  — 
go  among  the  tables  rescuing  empty  masse. 
Each  mass  returns  to  the  shelf  and  begins 
another  circuit  of  faucet,  counter  and  table. 
A  dame  so  fat  that  she  must  remain  per- 
manently at  anchor  —  the  venerable  Consti- 
tution of  this  fleet!  —  bawls  postcards  and 
matches.  A  man  in  pinge-nez,  a  decadent 
doctor  of  philosophy,  sells  pale  German 
cigars  at  three  for  ten  pfennigs.  Here  we 
are  among  the  plain  people.  They  believe  in 
Karl  Marx,  hlutwurst  and  the  Hofbrauhaus. 
They  speak  a  German  that  is  half  speech 
and  half  grunt.  One  passes  them  to  wind- 
ward and  enters  the  yard. 

A  brighter  scene.  A  cleaner,  greener 
land.  In  the  centre  a  circular  fountain;  on 
four  sides  the  mediseval  gables  of  the  old 
beerhouse;  here  and  there  a  barrel  on  end, 
to  serve  as  table.  The  yard  is  most  gay  on 
a  Sunday  morning,  when  thousands  stop  on 


104     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

their  way  to  church  —  not  only  Sociahsts 
and  servant  girls,  remember,  but  also  solemn 
gentlemen  in  plug  hats  and  frock  coats, 
students  in  their  polychrome  caps  and  in  all 
the  glory  of  their  astounding  duelling  scars, 
citizens'  wives  in  holiday  finery.  The  foun- 
tain is  a  great  place  for  gossip.  One  rests 
one's  mass  on  the  stone  coping  and  engages 
one's  nearest  neighbour.  He  has  a  cousin 
who  is  brewmaster  of  the  largest  brewery  in 
Zanesville,  Ohio.  Is  it  true  that  all  the 
policemen  in  America  are  convicts?  That 
some  of  the  skyscrapers  have  more  than 
twenty  stories?  What  a  country!  And 
those  millionaire  Socialists!  Imagine  a  rich 
man  denouncing  riches!  And  then, 
"  Gruss'  Gott!"'— and  the  pots  clink.  A 
kindly,  hospitable,  tolerant  folk,  these 
Bavarians!  "  Griiss'  Gott!" — "the  com- 
pliments of  God."  What  other  land  has 
such  a  greeting  for  strangers? 

On  May  day  all  Munich  goes  to  the  Hof- 
brauhaus  to  "  prove  "  the  new  bock.     I  was 


MUNICH  105 

there  last  ]May  in  company  with  a  Virginian 
weighing  190  pounds.  He  wept  with  joy 
when  he  smelled  that  heavenly  brew.  It 
had  the  coppery  glint  of  old  Falernian,  the 
pungent  bouquet  of  good  port,  the  acrid  grip 
of  EngUsh  ale,  and  the  bubble  and  bounce 
of  good  champagne.  A  beer  to  drink  rev- 
erently and  silently,  as  if  in  the  presence  of 
something  transcendental,  ineffable  —  but 
not  too  slowly,  for  the  supply  is  limited! 
One  year  it  ran  out  in  thirty  hours  and 
there  were  riots  from  the  Max-Joseph-Platz 
to  the  Isar.  But  last  May  day  there  was 
enough  and  to  spare  —  enough,  at  all  events, 
to  last  imtil  the  Virginian  and  I  gave 
up,  at  high  noon  of  May  3.  The  Virginian 
went  to  bed  at  the  Bayerischer  Hof  at  12 :30, 
leaving  a  call  for  4  p.  m.  of  May  5. 

All,  the  Hofbriiuhaus!  A  massive  and 
majestic  shrine,  the  Parthenon  of  beer  drink- 
ing, seductive  to  virtuosi,  fascinating  to 
the  connoisseur,  but  a  bit  too  strenuous,  a 
trifle  too  cruel,  perhaps,  for  the  dilettante. 


106     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

The  JMiincheners  love  it  as  hillinen  love  the 
hills.  There  every  one  of  them  returns,  soon 
or  late.  There  he  takes  his  children,  to 
teach  them  liis  hereditary  art.  There  he 
takes  his  old  grandfather,  to  say  farewell 
to  the  world.  There,  when  he  has  passed 
out  himself,  his  pallbearers  in  their  gauds  of 
grief  will  stop  to  refresh  themselves,  and 
to  praise  him  in  speech  and  song,  and  to 
weep  unashamed  for  the  loss  of  so  gemilth- 
lich  SL  fellow. 

But,  as  I  have  said,  the  Hofbrauhaus  is 
no  playroom  for  amateurs.  My  advice  to 
you,  if  you  would  sip  the  cream  of  Munich 
and  leave  the  hot  acids  and  lye,  is  that  you 
have  yourself  hauled  forthwith  to  the  Hof- 
theatre  Cafe,  and  that  you  there  tackle  a 
modest  seidel  of  Spatenbrau  —  first  one, 
and  then  another,  and  so  on  until  you  mas- 
ter the  science. 

And  all  that  I  ask  in  payment  for  that 
tip  —  the  most  valuable,  perhaps,  you  have 
ever  got  from  a  book  —  is  that  you  make 


MUNICH  107 

polite  inquiry  of  the  Herr  Wirt  regarding 
Fraulein  Sophie,  and  that  you  present  to 
her,  when  she  comes  tripping  to  your  table, 
the  respects  and  compliments  of  one  who 
forgets  not  her  cerulean  eyes,  her  swanlike 
glide,  her  Mona  Lisa  smile  and  her  leucemic 
and  superbly  manicured  hands! 


BERLIN 


BERLIN 

I  AM  back  again,  back  again  in  New 
York.  Mj^  rooms  are  littered  with 
battered  bags  and  down-at-the-heel  walking 
sticks  and  still-damp  steamer  rugs,  lying 
where  they  dropped  from  the  hands  of 
maudlin  beUboys.  My  trunks  are  creaking 
their  way  down  the  hall,  urged  on  by  a  per- 
spiring, muttering  porter.  The  windows, 
still  locked  and  gone  blue-grey  with  the 
August  heat,  rattle  to  the  eclio  of  the  "  L  " 
trains  a  block  away,  trains  rankling  up  to 
Harlem  with  a  sweating,  struggling  people, 
the  people  of  the  Republic,  their  day's  grind 
over,  jamming  their  one  way  to  a  thousand 
flat  houses,  there  to  await,  in  an  all  uncon- 
scious poverty,  the  sunrise  of  still  such  an- 
other day.     The  last  crack  of  a  triphammer, 

peckering  at  a  giant  pile  of  iron  down  the 

111 


112     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

block,  dies  out  on  the  dead  air.  A  taxicab, 
rrrrr-ing  in  the  street  below,  grunts  its  horn. 
A  newsboy,  in  neuralgic  yowl,  bawls  out  a 
sporting  extra.  Another  "  L  "  train  and 
the  panes  rattle  again.  A  momentary 
quiet  .  .  .  and  from  somewhere  in  a  nearby 
street  I  hear  a  grind-organ.  What  is  the 
tune  it  is  playing?  I've  heard  it,  I  know  — 
somewhere ;  but  —  no,  I  can't  remember.  I 
try  —  I  try  to  follow  the  air  —  but  no  use. 
And  then,  presently,  one  of  the  notes  whis- 
pers into  my  puckering  lips  a  single  word 
— "  MariechenJ"  Then  other  notes  whis- 
per others  — "  du  siisses  Viehchen '' ;  and 
then  others  still  others  — "  du  hist  mein 
alles,  hist  mein  Traumf'  And  the  battered 
bags  and  the  down-at-the-heel  walking 
sticks  and  the  still-damp  steamer  rugs  and 
the  trunks  creaking  down  the  hallway  and 
the  rattle  of  the  "  L  "  trains  fade  out  of  my 
eyes  and  ears  and  again  dear  little  Hulda  is 
with  me  under  the  Linden  trees  —  poor 
dear  little  Hulda  who  ever  in  the  years  to 


BERLIN  113 

come  shall  bring  back  to  me  the  starlit  ro- 
mance of  youth  —  and  again  I  feel  her  so 
soft  hand  in  mine  and  again  I  hear  her  whis- 
per the  auf  wiederseJin  that  was  to  be  our 
last  good-bye  —  and  I  am  three  thousand 
miles  over  the  seas.  For  it's  night  for  me 
again  in  Berlin  —  kronprinzessin  of  the 
cities  of  the  world. 

I  am  again  on  the  hitherward  shore  of  the 
Hundekehlensee,  flashing  back  its  diamond 
smiles  at  the  setting  sun.  I  am  sitting 
again  near  the  water's  edge  in  the  moist 
shade  of  the  Grunewald,  and  the  trees  sing 
for  me  the  poetry  that  they  once  sang  to  the 
palette  of  Leistikow.  My  nose  cools  itself 
in  the  recesses  of  a  translucent  schoppen  of 
Johannisberger,  proud  beverage  in  whose 
every  topaz  drop  lies  imprisoned  the  kiss  of 
a  peasant  girl  of  Prussia.  From  the  south- 
ward side  of  the  Grunewaldsee  the  horn  of 
a  distant  hunting  lodge  seems  to  call  a  wel- 
come to  the  timid  stars;  and  then  I  seem  to 
hear  another  —  or  is   it  just   an   echo? — » 


114     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

from  somewhere  out  the  spur  of  the  Havel- 
berge  beyond.  Or  is  just  the  Johamiesber- 
ger,  soul  of  the  most  imaginative  grape  in 
Christendom?  Or  —  woe  is  me  —  am  I 
really  back  again  across  the  seas  in  New 
York,  and  is  what  I  hear  only  the  horn  of 
the  taxicab,  rrrrr-ing  in  the  street  below? 

But  I  open  my  too-dreaming  eyes  —  and 
yes ;  I  am  in  the  Gi'unewald.  And  the  sum- 
mer sun  is  saffron  in  the  waters  of  the  lake. 
And  about  me,  at  a  thousand  tables  under 
the  Grunewald  trees,  are  a  thousand  people 
and  more,  the  people  of  the  Kaiserland, 
their  day's  work  over,  clinking  a  thousand 
wohlseins  in  a  great  twilight  peace  and 
aw^aiting,  in  all  unconscious  opulence,  the 
sunrise  of  yet  such  another  day.  And  a 
great  band,  swung  into  the  measures  by  a 
firm-bellied  kapellmeister  as  gorgeous  in  his 
pounds  of  gold  braid  as  a  peafowl,  sets  sail 
into  "  Parsifal "  against  a  spray  of  salivary 
brass.  And  the  air  about  me  is  full  of 
''  Kellner! ""  and  "  Zwei  Seidel,  hitte! "  and 


BERLIN  115 

"  Wiener  Roasthraten  und  Stangenspargel 
mit  gesclilagener  Butter! "  and  "  Zwei  Sei- 
dell hitte!"  and  "  Junge  Kohlrabi  mit 
gehratenen  SardeUenklopsen! "  and  "  Zwei 
Seidely  bitte! "  and  "  Sahnenfilets  mit 
Schwenkkartoffeln! "  and  "  Zwei  Seidel, 
bitte! "  and  a  thousand  schmeckfs  guts  and 
a  thousand  prosits  and  ''  Zwei  Seidel, 
bitte! "  And  no  outrage  upon  the  ear  is  in 
all  this  guttural  B  minor,  no  rape  of  exo- 
tic tympani,  but  a  sense  rather  of  superb 
languor  and  wholesome  tranquillity,  of  har- 
monious stomachic  socialism,  an  orchestra- 
tion of  honest  ovens  and  a  diapason  of 
honest  brdiis  and  brunners,  with  their  balmy 
wealth  of  nostril  arpeggios  and  roulades. 

And  thus  the  evening  breeze,  come  hither 
through  the  reeds  and  cypress  from  over  the 
purpling  Havel  hills  beyond,  takes  on  an 
added  perfume,  an  added  bouquet,  as  it 
transports  itself  to  the  sniffer  over  to  the 
hurrying  krebs-suppen  and  thick  brown- 
gravied    platters    and    dewy    seidels.     ^ly 


116     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

nose,  in  its  day,  has  engaged  with  many  a 
seductive  aroma.  It  has  met,  at  Cassis  on 
the  Mediterranean,  the  fimies  breathed  by 
hecasse  sur  canapes  and  Chateau  Lafitte  '69 
—  and  it  has  fFd  and  fFd  again  and  again  in 
an  ecstasy  of  inhalation.  It  has  encoun- 
tered in  Moscow,  the  regal  vapours  of  nevop 
astowka  Dernidoff  sweeping  across  a  slen- 
der goblet  of  golden  sherry  —  and  it  has 
been  abashed  at  the  delirium  of  scent.  On 
the  Grand  Boulevards,  it  has  skirmished 
with  punch  a  la  Toscane  flavoured  with 
Maraschino  and  with  bitter  almonds  —  and 
has  inhaled  as  if  in  a  dream.  The  juicy, 
dripping  cuts  of  Simpson's  in  London,  the 
paradisian  pudding  sueldoiro  on  the  little 
screened  veranda  in  the  shadow  of  the  six- 
minareted  Mosque  of  El-Azhar  in  Cairo, 
the  salmon  dipped  in  Chambertin  and  the 
artichokes,  sauce  Barigoule,  at  Schonbrunn 
on  the  road  to  Vienna,  the  escaloppes  de 
foie  gras  a  la  russe  ( favourite  dish  of  the  late 
Beau  McAllister)   at  Delmonico's  at  home 


BERLIN  lir 

—  all  these  and  more  have  wooed  my  nos- 
tril with  their  rare  fragrances.  But,  though 
I  have  attended  many  a  table  and  given  au- 
dience to  many  an  attendant  perfume,  no- 
where, nor  never,  has  there  been  borne  in 
upon  me  the  like  of  that  exquisite  nasal 
blend  of  hratens  and  hrdus  with  which  the 
twilight  breezes  have  christened  me  among 
the  trees  of  the  Grunewald.  Forgotten, 
there,  are  the  roses  on  the  moonlit  garden 
wall  in  Barbizon,  chaperoned  by  the  fairy 
forest  of  Fontainebleau ;  forgotten  the  damp 
wild  clover  fields  of  the  Indiana  of  my  boy- 
hood. All  vanished,  gone,  before  the  olfac- 
tory transports  of  this  concert  of  hops  and 
schnitzels,  of  Rhineland  vineyards  and  up- 
land kdse.  And  here  it  is,  here  in  the  great 
German  out-of-doors,  on  the  border  of  the 
Hundekehlen  lake,  with  a  nimble  kellner  at 
my  elbow,  with  the  plain,  homely  German 
people  to  the  right  and  left  of  me,  with  the 
stars  beginning  to  silver  in  the  silent  water, 
with  the  band  lifting  me,  a  drab  and  absurd 


118     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

American,  into  the  spirit  of  this  kaiserwelt, 
and  with  the  innocent  eyes  of  the  fair  frau- 
lein  under  yonder  tree  intermittently  eng- 
lishing  their  coquettish  glances  from  the 
eisschoholade  that  should  alone  engage  them 

—  here  it  is  that  I  like  best  to  bide  the  climb- 
ing of  the  moon  into  the  skies  over  Berlin 

—  here  it  is  that  I  like  best  to  wait  upon  the 
city's  night. 

Ah,  Berhn,  how  little  the  world  knows 
you  —  you  and  your  children !  It  sees  you 
fat  of  figure,  an  Adam's  apple  sti*uggling 
with  your  every  vowel,  ponderous  of  tem- 
perament. It  sees  you  a  sullen  and  vari- 
cose mistress,  whose  draperies  hang  heavy 
and  ludicrous  from  a  pudgy  form.  It  sees 
you  a  portly,  pursy,  foolish  Undine  strug- 
gling awkwardly  from  out  a  cyclopean  vat 
of  beer.  It  hears  your  music  in  the  ta-tata- 
tata-ta-ta  of  your  "  Ach,  du  lieher  Augus- 
tin "  alone ;  the  sum  of  your  sentiment  in 
your  "  Ich  weiss  nicht  was  soil  es  bedeuten." 
Wise  American  joumahsts,  commissioned 


BERLIN  119 

to  explore  your  soul,  have  returned  charac- 
teristically to  announce  that  you  "  In  your 
German  way"  (American  synonyms:  ele- 
l^hantine,  phlegmatic,  stodgy,  clumsy,  slug- 
gish) seek  desperately  to  appropriate,  in 
ferocious  lech  to  be  metropolitan,  the 
"  spirit  of  Paris "  {American  synonyms: 
silk  stockings,  "  wine,"  Maxim's,  jevous- 
aime.  Rat  Mort) .  Announce  they  also 
your  "  mechanical  "  pleasures,  your  weighty 
light-heartedness,  your  stolid,  stoic  essay  to 
take  unto  yourself,  still  in  tigerish  itch  to  be 
cosmopolitan,  the  frou-frouishness  of  the 
flirting  capital  over  the  frontier.  Wise  old 
philosophers!  Translating  you  in  terms  of 
your  palaces  of  prostitution,  your  Palais  de 
Danse,  your  Admirals-Casinos;  translating 
you  in  terms  of  your  purposely  spurious 
Victorias,  your  Riche  Cafes,  your  Fleder- 
mauses.  As  well  render  the  spirit  of  Vi- 
enna in  the  key  of  the  Karntnerstrasse  at 
eleven  of  the  Austrian  night;  as  well  play 
the  spirit  of  Paris  in  the  discords  of  its 


120     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

Montmartre,  in  the  leaden  pitch  of  its  Pre 
Catelan  at  sunrise.  Sing  of  London  from 
the  Astor  Club ;  sing  of  New  York  from  its 
Bryant  Park  at  moontide,  its  Rector's,  its 
ridiculous  Cafe  San  Souci  and  its  Madam 
Hunter's.     'Twere  the  same. 

Pleasure  in  the  mass,  incidentally,  is  per- 
force ever  mechanical;  a  levee  at  Bucking- 
ham Palace,  a  fete  on  the  velvet  terraces 
sloping  into  the  Newport  sea,  a  Coney  Is- 
land gangfest,  a  city's  electric  den  of  gilt 
and  tinsel. 

But  the  essence  of  a  city  is  never  here. 
Berlin,  in  the  wander] ust  of  its  darkened 
heavens,  is  not  the  ample-bosomed,  begar- 
neted,  crimson-lipped  Minna  angling  in  its 
gaudy  dance  decoy  in  the  Behrenstrasse ;  nor 
the  satin-clad,  pencilled-eyed  Amelie  ogling 
from  her  "  reserved  "  table  in  the  silly  sham 
called  Moulin  Rouge;  nor  yet  the  more 
baby-glanced,  shirtwaisted  Ertrude  laugh- 
ing in  the  duntoned  Cafe  Lang.  Berlin  is 
not  she  who  beckons  by  night  in  the  Fried- 


BERLIN  121 

riclistrasse;  nor  the  frowsy  she  who  sings  in 
the  bier-caharets  that  hover  about  the  Licht- 
prunksaal.  Berlin,  under  the  stars,  is  the 
sound  of  soldiers  singing  near  the  arch  of 
the  Brandenburger  Tor,  the  peaceful  hauer 
and  his  frau  Hannah  and  his  young  daugh- 
ters Lilla  and  Mia  lodged  before  their  abend 
bier  at  a  bare  table  on  the  darker  side  of  the 
far  Jagerstrasse.  Berlin,  when  skies  are 
navy  blue,  is  Heinrich,  gallant  rear  private 
of  Regiment  31,  publicly  and  with  audible 
ado  encircling  the  waist  of  his  most  recent 
engel  on  a  bench  in  the  Linden  promenade 

—  Berlin,  in  the  Inverness  of  night,  is 
Hulda,  little  Alsatian  rebel  —  a  rebel  to 
France  —  a  rebel  to  the  Vosges  and  the 
vineyards  —  Hulda,  the  provinces  behind 
her,  and  in  her  heart,  there  to  rule  forever, 
the  spirit  of  the  capital  of  Wilhelm  der 
Grosste.  For  the  spirit  of  Berlin  is  the 
laughter  of  a  pretty,  clean  and  healthy  girl 

—  not  the  neurotic  simper  of  a  devastated 
ware   of  the  Madeleine  highway,  not  the 


122     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

raucous  giggle  of  a  bark  that  sails  Picca- 
dilly, not  the  meaningfull  and  toothy  beam 
of  a  fair  American  badger  —  none  of  these. 
It  is  a  laugh  that  has  in  it  not  the  motive 
power  of  Krug  and  Company  or  Ruinart 
pere  et  fils;  it  smells  not  of  suspicioned 
guineas  to  be  enticed;  it  is  not  an  answer  to 
the  baton  of  necessity.  There's  heart  be- 
hind it  — ^-  and  it  means  only  that  youth  is  in 
the  air,  that  youth  and  steaming  blood  and 
a  living  life,  be  the  world  soever  stern 
on  the  morrow,  are  a  trinity  invincible, 
unconquerable  —  that  the  music  is  good,  the 
seidel  full.  Ah,  Berlin  —  ah,  Hulda  —  ah, 
youth  ...  ah,  youth,  what  things  you  see 
that  are  not,  that  never  will  be,  never  were; 
foolish,  innocent,  splendid  youth! 

An  end  to  such  so  tender  philosophies, 
such  so  blissful  ruminations.  For  even  now 
the  kutsche  has  di*awn  us  up  before  the  door 
of  Herr  Kempinski's  victual  studio,  run- 
ning from  the  Leipzigerstrasse  through  to 
the  Krausenstrasse  and  constituting  what  is 


BERLIN  123 

probably  the  largest  stomach  Senate  and 
House  of  Representatives  in  the  seven 
kingdoms.     Here,  in  the  multitudinous  sale 

—  the  Mosel-saal,  the  Berliner-saal,  the 
huge  Grauer-saal,  the  Burgen-saal,  the  Al- 
ter-saal,  the  Erker-saal,  the  Gelber-saal,  the 
Cadiner-saal,  the  Eingangs-saal,  the  Durch- 
gangs-saal,  the  Brauner-saal  and  the  vari- 
ous other  chromatic  and  geographical  saals 

—  one  may  listen  in  dyspeptic  Anglo-Saxon 
abashment  to  such  a  concerto  of  down-going 
suppen  and  coteletten  and  gemiise  and 
down-gurgling  Laubenheimer  and  Marco- 
brunner  and  Zeltinger  and  Brauneberger  as 
one  may  not  hear  elsewhere  in  the  palati- 
nates. And  here,  in  the  preface  to  the 
night,  one  may  prehend  while  again  eating 
(for  in  Germany,  you  must  know,  one's 
eating  is  limited  in  so  far  as  time  and  occa- 
sion are  concerned  only  by  the  locks  of  the 
alimentary  canal  and  the  contumacy  of  the 
intestines)  the  grand  democracy  of  this 
kaiser  city.     For  in  this  giant  eating  hall 


124     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

that  would  hold  a  round  half-dozen  TsTew 
York  restaurants  and  still  oifer  ample  el- 
bow room  for  the  dissection  of  a  knuckle 
and  the  wielding  of  a  stein,  one  observes  a 
vast  and  heterogeneous  commingling  of  the 
human  breed  such  as  may  not  be  observed 
outside  an  American  charity  ball.  At  one 
table,  a  lieutenant  of  Uhlans  with  his  mddel 
of  the  moment,  at  another  a  jolly  old  syitz- 
bub*  sending  with  a  loose  jest  a  girl  from 
the  chorus  of  the  Theater  des  Westens  into 
blushes  —  and  being  sent  himself  in  return 
with  a  looser.  At  another  (one  removed 
from  that  of  a  duo  of  palpable  daughters  of 
joy  engaged  in  a  desperate  hand-to-hand 
encounter  with  a  colossal  roastbif  englisch 
mit  Leipzig er  allerlei)  sl  family  man  with 
his  family.  At  still  another,  another  family 
man  with  his.  At  another,  the  Salome  from 
the  Konigliches  Opemhaus  —  at  another  a 
noted  advokat  —  at  another,  two  little  girls 
(they  can't  be  more  than  sixteen  years  old) 
enjoying   their  meal   and   their   bottle   of 


BERLIN  125 

Rhenish    wine    undisturbed,    unogled,    un- 
afraid. 

But  why  need  to  pursue  the  catalogue? 
This,  too,  is  Berhn.  Not  the  BerHn  of 
Herr  Adlon's  inn,  gilded  with  the  leaf  of 
Broadway  and  the  Strand  to  flabbergast 
and  ensnare  the  American  snooper  —  not 
the  Berlin  of  the  Bristol,  with  its  imitation 
cocktails  —  not  the  Berlin  of  the  Esplan- 
ade, gaudy  dump  of  the  Bellevuestrasse, 
with  its  sugar  tongs,  finger  bowls  and 
kindred  criteria  of  degeneracy  —  not  this 
Berlin;  but  the  real  Berlin  of  the  Ger- 
man people,  warm-hearted,  mindful  only 
of  its  own  affairs,  all-understanding,  all- 
sympathetic,  all-human  —  its  larynx  eter- 
nally beseeching  liquid  succour,  its 
stomach  eternally  demanding  chow.  And, 
too  —  and  note  this  well  —  not  the  Berlin 
of  the  rouged  menu  and  silk-stockinged 
hellner,  not  the  trumped-up  Berlin  of  the 
vaselined  vassal,  of  the  bowing  oherkellner, 
not  the  Berlin  of  the  affected  canteloupe 


126     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

(3,50  m.)  and  the  affected  biscuit  tortoni 
(2,40  m.)  —  but  the  Berhn  of  heinfleisch  im 
kessel  7nit  Meerrettich  (90  pf.),  the  Berhn 
of  krdfibrulie  init  nudeln  (40  pf.) — the 
Berhn  of  Mamsch  and  Traube. 

And  now  I  am  again  in  the  streets  of  the 
city,  ratthng  with  the  racing  flotilla  of  things 
awheel.  (Or  is  the  rattle  that  I  hear  only 
the  rattle  of  the  "  L  "  trains  a  block  away, 
and  am  I  reallj^  back  in  New  York?)  But 
no;  for  still  I  see  in  the  brilliant  Berlin 
moonlight  the  bronze  Quadriga  of  Victory 
atop  the  distant  Gate  of  Brandenburg  and 
still  I  hear  a  group  of  students  singing  in 
the  Cafe  Mozart,  and  still  —  but  what  is 
moonlight  beside  the  fairy  light  in  your 
eyes,  fair  Hulda?  What  is  song  beside  the 
soft  melody  of  your  smile  ?  Normandy  is  in 
the  night  air  .  .  .  "  man  lacJit,  man  leht, 
man  lieht  und  man  kiisst  wo's  Kilsse  gieht " 
.  .  .  and  we  and  all  the  world  are  young. 
Ah,  Hulda,  mine  oa\ti,  mine  all,  and  who  is 
that  pretty  girl  tripping  adown  the  street. 


B  E  R  L  I  ISr  127 

that  one  there  with  the  corals  at  her  throat 

and  the  devil  at  the  curtain  of  her  glance 

.  .  .  and  that  girl  who  has  just  passed,  that 

little  minx  with  eyes  like  sleeping  sapphires 

and  a  smile  as  melodious  as  mandolins  by  the 

summer  sea?     As  melodious  as  your  own, 

fair  Hulda. 

*         *         *         * 

The  play  is  over  and  I  have  alternated  a 
contemplation  of  the  loves  and  fears,  the 
tremors  and  triumphs  of  some  obese  stage 
princess  with  a  lusty  entr'-acte  excursion  into 
Culmbacher  and  the  cheese  sandwich,  served, 
as  is  the  appealing  custom,  in  the  theatre 
promenade.  And  thus  fortified  against  the 
night,  I  pass  again  into  the  thoroughfares 
still  a-rattle  with  the  musketry  of  wheels. 
I  perceive  that  many  amateur  American 
Al-Raschids  are  abroad  in  the  land,  pockets 
echoing  the  tintinnabulation  of  manifold 
marks  and  eyes  abulge  at  the  prospect  of 
midnight  diableries.  See  that  fellow  yon- 
der!    At  home,  probably  a  family  man,  a 


128     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

wearer  of  mesh  underwear,  an  assiduous  de- 
vourer  of  the  wisdom  of  George  Harvey,  a 
patron  of  the  dramas  of  Charles  Rann  Ken- 
nedy, a  spanker  of  children,  an  entertainer 
at  his  board  of  the  visiting  clergyman,  a 
pantophagous  subscriber,  a  silk  hat  wearer 
—  in  brief,  a  leading  citizen.  See  him 
oleaginate  his  grin  at  the  sight  of  a  passing 
painted  paver.  (To  his  mind,  probably  a 
barmaid  out  for  an  innocent  lark.)  See  him 
make  for  the  Palais  de  Danse  where  (so  he 
has  read  in  the  Saturday  Evening  Post) 
one  may  purchase  the  Berliner  spirit  at  so 
much  per  pound.  We  track  him,  and 
presently  we  behold  him  seated  at  a  table  in 
this  splendiferous  hall  of  Terpsichore  and 
Thais  "  opening  wine  "  and  purchasing  hlu- 
men  for  a  battle-scarred  veteran  who  is  tell- 
ing him  confidentially  that  she  just  got  in 
that  afternoon  from  her  poor  home  in  a  little 
Bavarian  village  and  that  she  feels  so  alone 
in  this  big,  great  city,  with  its  lures  and 
temptations,    its    snares    and    its    pitfalls. 


BERLIN  129 

Soon  the  bubbles  of  the  grape  are  percolat- 
ing through  his  arteries  and  soon  the 
"  Grosse  Rosinen  "  waltzes  have  mellowed 
his  conscience  and  soon  .  .  . 

"  Berlin  spirit,  huh!  "  he  is  telling  his  wife 
a  month  later — "Berlin  spirit?  All  arti- 
ficial. Just  to  make  money  out  of  the  vis- 
itors.    And  very  sordid! " 

At  the  Moulin  Rouge  and  at  the  Ad- 
mirals-Casino, at  the  Alhambra  and  the 
Tabarin,  at  the  Amor-sale  and  the  Rosen- 
sale,  we  track  down  others  such,  "  seeing  the 
night  hfe  of  Berhn."  We  see  them,  too, 
champagne  before  them,  coquetting  with 
Fraulein  Ilona,  who  numbers  Militar-Regi- 
ment  42  as  her  gentleman  friend,  and  with 
innocent-looking  little  Hedwig,  who  in  her 
day  has  tramped  the  streets  of  Brussels  and 
Paris,  of  London  and  Vienna;  we  see  them 
intriguing  elaborately  with  these  sisters  of 
sorrow,  who,  intriguing  in  turn  against  the 


130     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

night's  wage,  assist  the  skirmish  on  with  in- 
cendiaiy  quip  and  tender  touch  of  foot  and 
similar  cantharides  of  financial  amour. 
And  we  track  them  later  to  such  institutions 
as  the  Fledermaus  — "  der  grosse  luxuriose, 
vornehmstes  vergnilgungsplatz,  paradies- 
garten,  grosste  sehenswurdigkeit  Berlins " 
(in  the  advertisements)  —  as  the  Victoria 
and  the  Cafe  Riche,  the  Westminster  and 
the  Cafe  Opera  and  — 

"Berlin  spirit,  huh!"  they  are  telhng 
their  wives  a  month  later — "  Berlin  spirit? 
All  artificial.  Just  to  make  money  out  of 
the  visitors.     And  very  sordid!  " 

Ah,  Cairo  dreaming  in  the  Nile's  moon- 
haze  —  are  you  to  be  judged  thus  by  the 
narrow  street  that  snakes  into  the  dark  of 
Bulak?  And  Budapest  by  the  Danube  — 
are  you  to  be  judged  by  the  wreckage  of 
the  Stefansplatz  that  has  drifted  on  your 
shores?    And  you,  Vienna,  and  you,  Paris 


BERLIN  131 

—  are  you,  too,  to  be  measured  thus,  as 
measured  you  are,  by  the  crimson  Hght  of 
your  half -worlds  that  for  some  obscures  your 
stars  ? 

The  Berlin  of  the  Palais  de  Danse  is  the 
Paris  of  L'Abbaye;  the  Berlin  of  the  Fle- 
dermaus  is  the  New  York  of  Jack's. 

But  the  Berlin  that  I  know  and  love  is 
not  this  Berlin,  the  Berlin  of  Americans,  not 
the  spangled  Berhn,  the  hollow-laughing 
Berlin,  the  Berlin  decked  with  rhinestones, 
set  alight  with  prismatic  electroliers  and  of- 
fered up  as  mistress  to  foreign  gold.  When 
the  River  Spree  is  amethystine  under 
springtime  skies  and  the  city's  lights  are 
yellow  in  the  linden  trees,  I  like  best  the 
Berlin  that  sips  its  beer  in  the  peace  of  the 
little  by-streets,  the  Berlin  that  laughs  in 
the  Tiergarten  near  the  Lake  of  the  Gold- 
fish and  on  the  Isle  of  Louisa,  where  watch 
throughout  eternity  the  graven  images  of 
Friedrich  Wilhelm  the  Third  and  of  Wil- 
helm  the  First  in  the  years  of  his  boyhood. 


132     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

I  like  best  the  Berlin  that  sings  with  the 
students  in  the  undiscovered,  untainted 
wein  and  bier  stuhen  of  the  thitherward 
thoroughfares,  the  Berlin  that  dances  in  the 
Joachimstrasse,  where  the  mddels,  each  to 
herself  a  Cecilie,  shirtwaisted,  poor,  happy, 
kick  up  their  German  heels,  drink  up  their 
German  beer,  assault  the  Schweizerkase  and 
bring  back  memories  of  that  paradise  of  all 
paradises  —  the  Englischer  Garten  of 
Munich  the  Incomparable,  the  Divine. 

In  such  phases  of  this  kaiser  city,  one  is 
removed  from  the  so-called  Tingel-Tangel, 
or  varietes  and  cabarets,  where  the  visiting 
narrverein  is  regaled  with  such  integral  and 
valid  elements  of  Berlin  "  night  life "  as 
''  der  cake  walk/'  "  der  can-can  "  and  "  die 
matscJiicJie  —  getanzt  von  original  importi- 
erten  Mexikanerinnen/'  So,  too,  is  one  re- 
moved from  the  garish  demi-women  of  the 
so-called  "  Quartier  Latin  "  near  the  Orani- 
enburger  Tor  and  from  the  spurious  devil- 
tries of  the  Rothenburger  Krug  and  the 


BERLIN  133 

Staff  elstein,  with  their  "  property "  stu- 
dents, cheeks  scarred  with  red  ink,  singing 
"  Heidelberg"  (from  "  The  Prince  of  Pil- 
sen")  for  the  edification  and  impression  of 
foreign  visitors,  and  fiercely  and  frequently 
challenging  other  prop,  students  to  immedi- 
ate duel.  The  girls,  alas,  in  these  places  are 
not  unlovely.  Well  do  I  remember  the 
dainty  Elsa  of  the  Hopf enbliithe,  she  of  face 
kissed  by  the  Prussian  dawn,  and  employed 
at  sixteen  marks  the  week  to  wink  dramati- 
cally at  the  old  roues  and  give  the  resort 
"  an  air."  Well  does  memory  repeat  to  me 
the  loveliness  of  delicate  little  Anna,  she  with 
hair  like  the  waving  golden  grass  in  the 
fields  that  skirt  the  roadways  from  Targon 
to  Villandraut,  and  paid  so  much  the  month 
to  laugh  uproariously  every  time  the  hands 
of  the  clock  point  the  quarter-hour.  And 
Rika  and  Dessa  and  Julia  and  Paulina  — 
all  sweet  of  look,  all  professional  actresses; 
Bernhardts  of  Fun  (inc.),  Duses  of  Pleas- 
ure (ltd.).     Not  the  girls  in  whose  hearts 


134     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

Berlin  is  beating,  not  the  girls  in  whose  elan 
Berlin  lives  and  laughs.  Leave  behind  all 
places  such  as  these,  seeker  after  the  soul 
of  Berlin.  Leave  behind  the  Tingel-T an- 
gel with  its  uniformed  bouncer  at  the  gate, 
with  its  threadbare  piano,  with  its  "^  na 
kleener  Dicker"  smirked  by  soiled  decol- 
letes,  its  doleful  near-naughty  ditties  — 
"  IcJi  lass  mich  niclit  verfilhren,  dazu  bin  ich 
zu  schlau,  ich  kenne  die  Manieren  der  Man- 
ner ganz  genau  " — "  I  won't  be  led  astray, 
I  am  too  slick  for  that,  I  know  the  ways  of 
mankind,  I've  got  them  all  down  pat." 
Leave  behind  the  Berlin  of  the  Al-Raschids 
and  keep  to  the  Berlin  of  the  Germans. 

Just  as  the  worst  of  Paris  came  from 
America,  so  has  the  worst  of  Berlin  come 
from  America  by  way  of  Paris.  The 
maquereau  spirit  of  Montmarte,  with  its 
dollar  lust  and  its  poisoned  blood,  has  not 
yet  the  throat  of  this  German  night  city  full 
in  its  fists ;  but  the  fists  are  tightening  slowly 
—  and  the  voice  behind  them  speaks  not 


BERLIN  135 

French,  but  the  jargon  of  Broadway.  And 
yet,  when  finally  the  fingers  work  closer, 
closer  still,  around  that  throat,  when  finally 
the  death  giu'gle  of  spontaneous  pleasure 
and  of  clean,  honest,  fearless  night  skies 
comes  —  and  yet,  when  this  happens,  Berlin 
will  still  rise  from  the  dunghill.  I  must  be- 
lieve it.  For  they  —  we  —  may  kill  the 
laughter  of  Berlin's  streets  —  as  we  have 
killed  it  in  Paris  —  but  we  can  never  kill 
the  heart,  the  spirit  and  the  hving,  quivering 
corpuscles  of  German  blood.  The  French 
may  drink  stronger  stuffs,  eat  richer  foods 
and  love  oftener  than  the  Germans,  and  may 
be  better  fighters  —  but  they  cannot  laugh, 
they  cannot  sing  as  the  Germans  laugh  and 
sing.  And  Berlin  is  the  new  Germany,  the 
Germany  of  to-day  and  to-morrow  .  .  .  the 
Germany  whose  laughter  will  grow  louder  as 
the  decades  pass  and  whose  song  will  echo 
clearer  from  the  distant  hills.  While  Paris 
(to  go  to  Conrad) — is  not  Paris  and  her 
land  already  at  Bankok,  and  far,  far  be- 


136     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

yond  ?  Her  children  spent  before  their  day, 
hstening  to  the  too-soon  lecture  of  Time? 
And  all  hopelessly  nodding  at  him:  "the 
man  of  finance,  the  man  of  accounts,  the 
man  of  law,  we  all  nodded  at  him  over  the 
polished  table  that  like  a  still  sheet  of  bro^vn 
water  reflected  our  faces,  lined,  wrinkled; 
our  faces  marked  by  toil,  by  deceptions,  by 
success,  by  love ;  our  weary  eyes  looking  still, 
looking  always,  looking  anxiously  for  some- 
thing out  of  life,  that  while  it  is  expected  is 
already  gone  —  has  passed  unseen,  in  a  sigh, 
in  a  flash  —  together  with  the  youth,  with 
the  strength,  with  the  romance  of  illu- 
sions. .  .  ." 

But  again  a  truce  to  philosophisings.  It 
gi'ows  late  apace.  (Ah,  Hulda,  how  like 
opals  in  the  IjT-ic  April  rain  are  your  eyes 
in  this  first  faint  purple-pink  of  the  tremu- 
lous dawTi  .  .  .  Were  I  a  Heine!)  In  my 
far-away  America,  Hulda,  in  far-away  New 
York,  it  is  now  onto  midnight.  I  see 
Broadway,     strumpet     of     the     liighways, 


BERLIN  137 

sweltering  collarless  under  the  loud  electric- 
ity of  Times  Square.  I  see  a  fetid  blonde, 
dangling  a  patent  leather  handbag,  hurry- 
ing to  an  assignation  in  Forty-fifth  Street. 
I  see  two  actors,  pointing  their  boasts  with 
yellow  bamboo  canes.  A  chop  suey  restau- 
rant flashes  its  sign.  And  I  can  hear  the 
racking  ragtime  out  of  Shanley's.  A  big 
sightseeing  bus  is  howling  the  fictitious  lure 
of  the  Boweiy,  Chinatown  and  the  Ghetto 
to  gaping  groups  from  the  hinterlands.  A 
streetwalker.  Another.  Another.  In  the 
subway  entrance  across  the  street,  a  blind 
man  is  selling  papers.  A  "  dip  "  calls  a 
friendly  "  Hello,  Dan  "  to  the  policeman  in 
front  of  the  drugstore  and  works  his  steps 
over  the  car  tracks  toward  the  drunk  teeter- 
ing against  the  window  of  the  Jew's  cloth- 
ing store.  The  air  is  dust-filled.  An  inter- 
mittent baking  gust  from  the  river  sends  a 
cast-aside  Journal  fluttering  aloft.  A  dirt- 
encrusted  bum  begs  the  price  of  a  coffee. 
Another  streetwalker,  appearing  from  the 


138     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

backwaters  of  Seventh  Avenue,  grins  in  the 
drugstore's  green  light  .  .  . 

But  to  your  eyes,  Hulda,  must  be  given 
no  such  picture.  Yet  such  is  the  New  York 
I  come  from;  such  the  New  York,  stunning 
by  day  in  its  New  World  strength  and 
splendour,  loathsome  by  night  in  its  hot,  il- 
lumined bawdry.  Ah,  city  by  the  Hudson, 
forgetting  Riverside  Drive  twinkling  amid 
the  long  tiara  of  trees,  forgetting  the  still  of 
the  lake  and  cool  of  the  boulders  that  plead 
in  Central  Park,  forgetting  the  superb 
majesty  of  Cathedral  Heights  and  the 
mighty  peace  of  the  byways  —  forgetting 
these  all  for  a  Broadway! 

But  the  symphony  of  the  BerUn  dawn  is 
ours  now,  fraulein,  and  have  done  with  in- 
trusive memories,  corroding  reflections. 
What  are  my  people  doing  in  Berhn  at  this 
hour?  What  are  these  prowling  Al-Ras- 
chids  about?  Do  they  know  the  sorcery  of 
the  virgin  morning  light  of  Berlin  as  it  falls 
upon  the   Siegesallee  and  gives  life  again 


BERLIN  139 

to  the  marble  heroes  of  Germany?  Have 
they  ever  stood  with  such  as  j^ou,  fraulein, 
in  the  coral-tipped  hours  of  the  dawning  day 
before  the  image  of  Friedrich  der  Grosse  in 
that  wonderful  lane  and  felt,  through  this 
dead,  cold  thing,  the  thrill  of  an  empire's 
glory?  Do  they  know  the  witchery  of  the 
withering  Berlin  night  as  it  plays  out  its 
wild  fantasia  in  the  leaves  of  the  Linden 
trees?  Have  they  ever  been  with  such  as 
you,  fraulein,  at  the  base  of  the  Pillar  of 
Triumph  in  Konigsplatz  or  sat  with  such  as 
you,  fraulein,  near  the  Grotto  Lake  in  the 
Tiergarten,  or  stood  with  such  as  you, 
fraulein,  on  one  of  the  bridges  arching 
the  Spree  in  the  first  trembling  innuendo  of 
morning? 

Where  are  these,  my  people? 

You  will  find  them  seeking  the  romance 
of  Berlin's  greying  night  amid  the  Turkish 
cigarette  smoke  and  stale  wine  smells  of  the 
half-breed  cabarets  marshalled  along  the 
Jagerstrasse,   the   Behrenstrasse   and  their 


140     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

tributaries.  You  will  find  them  up  a  flight 
of  stairs  in  one  of  the  all-night  Linden  cafes, 
throwing  celluloid  balls  at  the  weary,  pa- 
tient, left-over  women.  You  will  find  them 
sitting  in  the  balcony  of  the  Pavilion  Mas- 
cotte,  blowing  up  toy  balloons  and  hurling 
small  cones  of  coloured  paper  down  at  the 
benign  harlotry.  You  will  see  them,  hatless, 
shooting  up  the  Friedrichstrasse  in  an  open 
taxicab,  singing  "  Give  ]My  Regards  to 
Broadway  "  in  all  the  prime  ecstasy  of  a  beer 
souse.  You  will  find  them  in  the  rancid 
Tingel-Tangel,  blaspheming  the  kellner  be- 
cause they  can't  get  a  highball.  You  will 
find  them  in  the  Nollendorfplatz  gaping  at 
the  fairies.  You  will  see  them,  green- 
skinned  in  the  tyrannic  light  of  early  morn- 
ing, battering  at  the  iron  grating  of  their 
hotel  for  the  porter  to  open  up  and  let  them 
in. 

For  them,  are  no  souvenirs  of  happy  even- 
ing hours  that  sing  always  in  the  heart  of  a 
Berlin  they  can  never  know.     For  them, 


BERLIN  141 

shall  be  no  memory  of  that  vast  and  insu- 
perable gemiltlichheit,  that  superb  and  pa- 
cific democracy,  that  dwells  and  shall  dwell 
forever  by  night  in  the  spirit  of  the  German 
people.  They  will  never  know  the  Berlin 
that  lifts  its  seidel  to  the  setting  sim,  the 
Berlin  that  greets  the  moonrise,  the  Berlin 
that  meets  the  dawn.  The  Berlin  that  they 
know  is  a  Berlin  of  French  champagnes, 
Italian  confetti,  Spanish  dancers,  English- 
trained  waiters,  Austrian  courtesans  and 
American  hilarities.  They  interpret  a  city 
by  its  leading  all-night  restaurant;  a  nation 
by  the  demi-mondaine  who  happens  to  be 
nearest  their  table.     For  them,  there  is  no  — 

But  hark,  what  is  that? 

What  is  that  strange  sound  that  comes 
to  me? 

"Extra!  Evening  Telegram,  extra! 
All  'bout  the  Giants  win  double-header!  " 

A  newsboy  in  neuralgic  yowl,  bawHng  in 
the  street  below. 


142     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

Alas,  it  is  true:  after  all,  I  am  really 
back  again  in  New  York.  My  rooms  are 
littered  with  battered  bags  and  down-at- 
the-heel  walking  sticks  and  still-damp 
steamer  rugs,  lying  where  they  dropped 
from  the  hands  of  maudlin  bellboys.  My 
trunks  are  creaking  their  way  down  the  hall, 
urged  on  by  a  perspiring,  muttering  porter. 
The  windows,  still  locked  and  gone  blue- 
grey  with  the  August  heat,  rattle  to  the  echo 
of  the  rankling  "  L  "  trains.  The  last  crack 
of  a  triphammer,  peckering  at  a  giant  pile  of 
iron  down  the  block,  dies  out  on  the  dead  air. 
A  taxicab,  rrrrr-ing  in  the  street  below, 
grunts  its  horn.  Another  "  L  "  train  and 
the  panes  rattle  again.  A  momentary  quiet 
.  .  .  and  from  somewhere  in  a  nearby  street 
I  hear  again  the  grind-organ. 

It  is  playing  "  Alexander's  Ragtime 
Band." 


LONDON 


LONDON 

MACAULEY'S  New  Zealander,  so  I 
hear,  will  view  the  ruins  of  St.  Paul's 
from  London  Bridge;  but  as  for  me,  I  pre- 
fer that  more  westerly  arch  which  celebrates 
Waterloo,  there  to  sniff  and  immerse  myself 
in  the  town.  The  hour  is  8 :  15  post  meridien 
and  the  time  is  early  summer.  I  have  just 
rolled  down  Welhngton  Street  from  the 
Strand,  smoking  a  ninepence  Vuelta  Abajo, 
humming  an  ancient  air.  One  of  Simpson's 
incomparable  English  dinners  —  salmon 
with  lobster  sauce,  a  cut  from  the  joint,  two 
vegetables,  a  cress  salad,  a  slice  of  old  Stilton 
and  a  mug  of  bitter  —  has  lost  itself,  amazed 
and  enchanted,  in  my  interminable  recesses. 
My  board  is  paid  at  Morley's.  I  have  some 
thirty-eight  dollars  to  my  credit  at  Brown's, 
a  ticket  home  is  sewn  to  my  lingerie,  there  is 

145 


146     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

a  friendly  jingle  of  shillings  and  sixpences 
in  my  pocket.  The  stone  coping  invites;  I 
lay  myself  against  it,  fold  my  arms,  blow  a 
smoke  ring  toward  the  sunset,  and  give  up 
my  soul  to  recondite  and  mellow  meditation. 
There  are  thirteen  great  bridges  between 
Fulham  Palace  and  the  Isle  of  Dogs,  and  I 
have  been  at  pains  to  try  every  one  of  them ; 
but  the  best  of  all,  for  such  needs  as  over- 
take a  well  fed  and  ruminative  man  on  a 
summer  evening,  is  that  of  Waterloo. 
Look  westward  and  the  towers  of  St. 
Stephen's  are  floating  in  the  haze,  a  greenish 
slate  colour  with  edges  of  peroxide  yellow 
and  seashell  pink.  Look  eastward  and  the 
fine  old  dome  of  St.  Paul's  is  slipping  softly 
into  greasy  shadows.  Look  downward  and 
the  river  throws  back  its  innumerable  hues 
—  all  the  coal  tar  dyes  plus  all  the  duns  and 
drabs  of  Thames  mud.  The  tide  is  out  and 
along  the  south  bank  a  score  of  squat  barges 
are  high  and  dry  upon  the  flats.  Opposite, 
on  the  embankment,  the  lights  are  beginning 


LONDON  147 

to  blink,  and  from  the  little  hollow  behind 
Charing  Cross  comes  the  faint,  far-away 
braying  of  a  brass  band. 

All  bands  are  in  tune  at  four  hundred 
yards,  the  reason  whereof  you  must  not  ask 
me  now.  This  one  plays  a  melody  I  do  not 
know,  a  melody  plaintive  and  ingratiating, 
of  clarinet  arpeggios  all  compact.  Some 
lay  of  amour,  I  venture,  breathing  the  hot 
passion  of  the  Viennese  Jew  who  wrote  it. 
But  so  heard,  filtered  through  that  golden 
haze,  echoed  back  from  that  lovely  panorama 
of  stone  and  water,  all  flavour  of  human 
frailty  has  been  taken  out  of  it.  There  is, 
indeed,  something  wholly  chastening  and 
dephlogisticating  in  the  scene,  something 
which  makes  the  joys  and  tumults  of  the 
flesh  seem  trivial  and  debasing.  A  man 
must  be  fed,  of  course,  to  yield  himself  to 
the  suggestion,  for  hunger  is  frankly  a  brute ; 
but  once  he  has  yielded  he  departs  forthwith 
from  his  gorged  carcass  and  flaps  his  trans- 
cendental    wings.  ...  Do     honeymooners 


148     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

ever  come  to  Waterloo  Bridge?  I  doubt  it. 
Imagine  turning  from  that  sublime  sweep  of 
greys  and  sombre  gilts,  that  perfect  arrange- 
ment of  blank  masses  and  sweeping  lines,  to 
the  mottled  pink  of  a  cheek  lately  virgin,  the 
puny  curve  of  a  modish  eyebrow,  the  hideous 
madness  of  a  trousseau  hat !  .  .  . 

I  am  no  stranger  to  these  moods  and 
whims.  I  am  not  merely  a  casual  outsider 
who  has  looked  about  him,  sniffed  deprecat- 
ingly  and  taken  the  train  for  Dover  —  which 
leads  to  Calais  —  which  leads  to  Paris  — 
which  leads  to  youthful  romance.  I  have 
wallowed  in  London  as  the  ascetic  wallows 
in  his  punitive  rites,  with  a  strange,  keen 
joy.  I  have  been  a  voluntary  St.  Simeon 
on  its  cold  grey  street  corners.  I  have 
eaten  so  often  —  and  so  much  —  at  Simp- 
son's that  I  know  two  of  the  waiters  by 
their  first  names.  And  I  could  order  cor- 
rectly their  famous  cuts  by  looking  at 
my  watch,  knowing  at  what  hour  the  mut- 
ton  was   ready,   at   what   hour   the   roast 


LONDON  149 

beef  was  rarest.  So  long  have  I  worn  Eng- 
lish shirts  that  even  now  I  find  myself  crawl- 
ing into  the  American  brand  after  the  man- 
ner of  the  woodchuck  burrowing  into  his 
hole.  Frequently  I  find  myself  proffering 
dimes  to  the  fair  uniformed  vestals  of  our 
theatres  who  present  me  with  programmes. 
I  have  read  each  separate  slab  in  West- 
minster Abbey.  I  'have  made  suave  and 
courtly  love  to  a  thousand  nursemaids  in 
Hyde  Park.  I  have  exuded  great  globules 
of  perspiration  rowing  on  the  Thames,  while 
the  fair  beneficiary  of  my  labours  lolled 
placidly  in  the  boat's  stem  upon  a  hummock 
of  Persian  j)illows.  I  know  every  over- 
hanging lovers'  tree  from  Richmond  to 
Hampton  Court.  I  have  consumed  hogs- 
heads of  ale  at  "  The  Sign  of  the  Cock."  I 
have  followed  the  horses  at  Epsom  and 
Newmarket,  at  Goodwood  and  Ascot.  I 
have  browsed  for  hours  in  French's  book 
store.  I  have  lounged  in  luxurious  taxi- 
cabs  upholstered  in  pale  grey,  and  ridden  in- 


150     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

terminably  back  and  forth  through  the  Mall, 
Constitution  Hill  and  Piccadilly.  .  .  . 

All  of  these  things  have  I  done.  And 
more.  In  brief,  I  have  lived  the  dashing 
and  reckless  life  of  a  dozen  Londoners. 
But  —  and  here  is  the  point !  —  I  have 
lived  it  in  the  daytime.  When  the  shadows 
began  to  drift  into  the  fogs  and  the  twilight 
settled  over  the  grey  masonry  of  the  city, 
I  would  generally  fly  to  the  theatre  and 
afterward  to  my  garish  rooms  in  Adams 
Street;  or,  as  was  often  the  case,  I  would 
merely  fly  to  my  flat,  giving  up  my  evenings 
to  the  low  humour  of  Rabelais,  or  to  deep, 
deep  sleep. 

Although  for  years  one  could  not  lose  me 
in  London,  or  flabbergast  me  with  those 
leaning- tower-of-Pisa  addresses  (the  items 
piled  one  upon  the  other  in  innumerable 
strata),  I  knew  nothing  of  the  goings-on 
when  the  windows  of  London  became 
patches  of  orange  light.  In  fact,  I  assumed 
that  when  I  slept  London  also  snored.     To 


LONDON  151 

think  of  London  and  of  night  romance  was 
like  conjuring  up  the  wildest  of  anachro- 
nisms. Romance  there  was  in  London,  but 
to  me  it  had  always  been  shot  through  with 
sunshine.  It  had  been  the  hard  commercial 
romance  of  the  Stock  Exchange.  Or  the 
courteous  and  impeccable  romance  of  pol- 
ished hats  and  social  banahties.  Or  the 
gustatory  romance  of  Cheddar  cheese,  musty 
ale,  roast  lamb  and  greens.  Or  it  had  been 
the  romance  of  the  Cook's  tourist  —  the  ro- 
mance of  cathedrals,  towers,  palaces,  dun- 
geons and  parliamentary  buildings.  Or  the 
romance  of  pomp,  of  horseguards  and  hel- 
mets and  epaulettes  and  brass  buttons  and 
guns  at  "  present  arms."  Or  it  had  been 
the  anaemic  romance  of  Ceylon  tea,  toasted 
muffins  and  petits  fours.  As  for  amours 
and  intrigues  and  subdued  lights  and  dances 
and  cabarets  and  sparkling  demi-mondaines 
and  all-night  orchestras  and  liquid  jousting 
bouts  and  perfume  and  champagne  and 
rouge  and  kohl  —  who  would  have  thought 


152     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

that  London,  the  severe,  the  formal;  Lon- 
don, the  saintly,  the  high-collared,  the  stiff; 
London,  the  serious,  the  practical,  the  kid- 
gloved;  London,  the  arctic,  the  methodical, 
the  fixed,  the  ceremonious,  the  starched,  the 
precise,  the  punctihous,  the  conservative,  the 
static;  London,  the  God-fearing,  the  episco- 
pal, the  nice,  the  careful,  the  scrupulous,  the 
aloof,  the  decorous,  the  proper,  the  digni- 
fied—  who  would  have  thought  that  Lon- 
don would  loosen  up  and  relax  and  partake 
of  the  potions  of  Eros  and  Bacchus? 

And  yet  —  and  yet  —  back  of  London's 
grim  and  formidable  exterior  there  lurks  a 
smile.  Her  stiff  and  proper  legs  know 
how  to  shake  themselves.  Her  cold  and 
sluggish  blood  grows  warm  to  the  strains 
of  dance  music.  Her  desensitized  and 
asphalt  j^alate  thrills  and  throbs  beneath 
the  tricklings  of  Cordon  Rouge.  Her  steel 
heart  flutters  at  the  touch  of  a  wheedhng 
phryne.  She,  too,  can  wear  the  strumpet 
garb  of  youth.     She,  too,  in  the  vitals  of  her 


LONDON  153 

nature,  longs  for  the  gay  romance  of  the 
Boulevard  Montparnasse  ere  the  American 
possessed  it.  She,  too,  admires  the  rhythmic 
parabolic  curve  of  bare  shoulders.  Silken 
ankles  and  amorous  whisperings  stir  her  — 
if  not  to  deeds  of  valour,  then  at  least  to 
deeds  of  indiscretion.  London,  it  seems, 
cannot  look  upon  the  moon  without  suffer- 
ing some  of  the  love  quahns  of  Endymion. 
In  fine,  London,  the  mentalized,  is  human. 

It  was  only  last  year  that  the  rumours  of 
London's  night  life  sank  into  the  depths  of 
my  sensitive  ears.  At  first  I  put  such  mur- 
murings  aside  as  psychiatric  ravings  of 
visionaries  and  y earners.  Always  at  the 
first  signs  of  neurosis  —  the  inevitable  result 
of  the  simple  life  —  I  dashed  to  Paris,  to  the 
golden-haired  Reine  at  the  Marigny ;  or  else 
I  cabled  to  Anna  of  the  Admiral's  Palast  in 
Berhn;  or,  if  time  permitted,  I  sought  the 
glittering  presence  of  Bianca  Weise  at 
Vienna.  (Ah,  Bianca!  Du  siisser  Engel!) 
Never  once  did  it  occur  to  me  that  youth 


154     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

stalked  abroad  in  the  London  streets,  that 
gaiety  sang  among  the  wine  cups  in  Lon- 
don cafes,  that  romance  went  drunk  amid 
the  mazes  of  abandoned  dancing.  London 
had  always  seemed  to  me  essentially  senile  — 
grey-haired  and  sedate.  And  so  I  devoted 
myself  to  the  labours  of  youth,  as  did  the 
youthful  George  Moore;  and  when  the  first 
crocuses  of  the  spring  appeared,  and  the 
lilacs  came  forth,  and  the  April  primroses 
got  into  my  blood,  and  the  hawthorn  sent 
forth  its  pink  and  white  shoots,  I  sought  the 
Luxembourg  or  the  Tiergarten  or  the 
Prater.  Why,  indeed,  I  thought,  should 
spring  come  to  London?  Why  should 
Henley,  an  Englishman,  have  called  Spring 
"  the  wild,  the  sweet-blooded,  wonderful 
harlot "  ?  And  why  should  the  year's  first 
crocus  have  brought  him  luck?  Had  he  in- 
deed lain  mouth  to  mouth  with  spring 
in  London?  Perhaps.  But  I  doubted  him. 
Therefore,  before  the  lavender  appeared,  I 
was  beyond  the  channel. 


LONDON  155 

But  last  spring  I  met  the  girl  in  the  flat 
below  me.  Her  name  was  Elsie  —  Win- 
wood,  I  think.  Of  one  thing,  however,  I  am 
sure;  she  had  cold  grey  eyes  and  auburn 
hair  —  an  uncanny  combination ;  but  she  was 
typical  of  the  English  girl,  the  girl  who  had 
been  educated  abroad.  This  girl  and  I  came 
face  to  face  on  the  stairs  one  day. 

"  Why  do  you  always  leave  London  at 
the  best  time  of  the  year? "  she  asked  me. 

"  I  am  young,"  I  confessed.  "  In  the 
spring  I  live  by  night,  and  one  may  only 
sleep  in  London  at  night." 

"  But  you  do  not  know  London,"  she  told 
me. 

She  smiled  intimatingly  and  disappeared 
into  the  gloom  of  her  studio. 

That  night  I  thought  of  Arthur  Symons's 
"  London  Nights."  Nobody  in  any  city  in 
the  world  had  more  subtly  caught  the  spirit 
of  youthful  buoyancy,  the  spirit  of  roman- 
tic evanescence,  the  spirit  of  midnight  aban- 
don.    Could    it    be    that    he    was    but    a 


156     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

"  poseur,"  a  dealer  in  false  words,  a  con- 
cocter  of  the  non-existent?  Did  the  eyes 
of  dancers  never  gleam  in  his?  Did 
Renee  never  issue  forth  from  that  dim  arch- 
way where  he  waited?  Did  Nora  never 
dance  upon  the  pavement  ?  Was  Violet  but 
the  figment  of  a  poet's  dreams?  And  was 
that  painted  angel,  Peppina,  a  mere  psychic 
snare?  Could  any  man  —  even  a  poet  — 
write  as  he  did  of  Muriel  at  the  Opera  if 
there  had  been  no  Muriel?  It  seemed 
highly  improbable.  Finally  I  decided  that, 
ere  departing  for  Reine  or  Anna  or  Bianca, 
I  would  sally  forth  into  the  night  of  London 
and  see  if,  after  all,  romance  did  not  lurk 
in  the  darkened  corners. 

At  first  I  started  without  a  guide,  trust- 
ing to  my  own  knowledge  of  the  city,  intend- 
ing to  follow  up  vague  rumours  to  which  I 
had  lent  but  half  an  ear.  Later  I  equipped 
myself  with  a  guide  —  not  a  professional 
guide,  but  a  man  of  means  and  of  easy 


LONDON  157 

morals,  a  young  barrister  in  whose  family 
were  R.  A.'s,  M.  P.'s  and  K.  C.'s. 

"  Shall  we  see  it  all?  "  asked  Leonard. 

"  All,"  I  replied.  "  From  the  high  to  the 
low." 

We  set  forth.  It  was  eleven  o'clock,  and 
the  theatregoers  were  swarming  in  the 
Strand.  We  were  heading  for  a  great  arch 
of  incandescent  light. 

I  was  beginning  to  be  disappointed. 
Visions  of  the  dark-eyed  Reine,  in  veils  of 
mauve  and  orange,  silhouetted  against  the 
synchromatic  scenery  of  the  Marigny  swam 
before  my  eyes.  I  gave  vent  to  a  cavernous 
yawn.  I  had  often  had  supper  at  the  Savoy. 
But  such  a  performance  was  not  my  idea  of 
romance.  I  had  never  considered  that 
luxurious  dining  room  in  the  light  of  ad- 
venture. But  with  Leonard's  suggestion  I 
entered  and  found  that,  when  the  mental 
lenses  are  focused  correctly,  it  in  truth  pos- 
sesses much  of  that  same  gorgeousness  and 


158     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

lavish  spirit  which  no  doubt  invested  the 
banquets  of  Belshazzar. 

Thus  begins  the  night  romance  of  Lon- 
don: 

Souper. 

Oeufs  de  Pluvier 

Consomme  Double  en  Tasse 

Fillet  de  Merlan  a  I'Anglaise 

Pommes  Nature 

Caille  Cocotte  Armenienne 

Buffet  Froid 

Salade 

Petit  Glace  Parisienne 

Friandises 

This  is  arbitrary,  however.  On  the 
crested  bill  of  fare  we  learn  that  there  are 
other  things  to  be  had,  but  that  they  must 
be  ordered  a  la  carte.  Glancing  down  the 
mammoth  card  we  begin  reading  such  items : 
Saumon  Fume,  Pigeon  Cocotte  Bonne 
Femme,  Rognons  Suates,  Champignons, 
Caille  Royal  aux  Raisins,  Tournedos  Saute 
Mascotte,  Noisette  dfAgneau  Fines  Herhes, 


LONDON  159 

Poussin  de  Hambourg  Vapeur,  Medcdllon 
Ris  de  Veau  Colbert,  Terrine  de  Boeuf  a  la 
Mode  Glacee,  Supreme  de  Chapon  Jean- 
nette  .  .  .  and  so  on,  almost  indefinitely. 
I  saw  nothing  in  the  fact  —  nor  had  I  seen 
anything  in  the  fact  —  that  the  menu  con- 
tained not  one  English  word;  but  later  in 
the  week  these  affectations  of  French  dishes 
became  highly  significant.  They  were 
really  the  symbol  of  London's  night  romance. 
They  were  the  tuning  fork  which  gave  the 
pitch  for  London  pleasures.  For  romance 
and  gaiety  in  London  are  grafted  to  an 
otherwise  unromantic  and  lugubrious  hulk. 
All  joys  in  that  terrible  city  are  lugged 
from  overseas,  and,  in  the  process  of  sutur- 
ing, the  spontaneity  has  been  lost,  the  buoy- 
ancy has  disappeared,  the  honesty  has  van- 
ished. 

But  no  people  can  be  without  romance. 
No  nation  can  withstand  forever  the  engines 
of  repression.  Not  all  the  moral  lawmakers 
of  England  have  succeeded  in  stamping  out 


160     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

the  natural  impulses.  Hypocrisy,  that 
great  mediator,  sits  into  the  game  and  stacks 
the  cards.  There  is  no  more  sensuous  din- 
ing room  in  the  world  than  the  Savoy, 
There  is  no  more  impressive  vision  of  hu- 
man beings  in  the  primitive  act  of  eating 
than  can  be  gained  from  the  top  of  the  stair- 
way which  leads  into  that  great  double  room. 
And  nowhere  on  earth  is  there  a  more  cos- 
mopolitan gathering  than  sits  down  to  the 
Savoy  supper  when  the  theatres  are  over. 
Here  at  least  is  visual  romance ;  and  when  we 
inspect  the  people  at  closer  range  we  glimpse 
a  more  intimate  romance.  One  catches 
snatches  of  conversation  from  a  dozen  lan- 
guages within  the  radius  of  hearing.  Here 
is  modern  civilisation  at  apogee  —  the  final 
word  in  luxury  —  the  denouement  of  spec- 
tacular life.  Go  to  the  Aquariimi  in  St. 
Petersburg,  to  the  Adlon  in  Berlin,  to  the 
Bristol  in  Vienna,  to  the  Cafe  de  Paris;  go 
wherever  you  will  —  to  Cairo,  to  Buenos 
Aires,  to  Madrid  —  the  Savoy  at  the  supper 


LONDON  161 

hour  surpasses  them  all.  From  the  pan- 
talooned  giants  who  relieve  you  of  your  outer 
garments  to  the  farthest  table  in  the  room 
where  the  great  windows  overlook  the  Em- 
bankment Gardens,  there  is  not  one  note  to 
mar  the  gorgeous  ensemble. 

But  we  must  not  tarry  too  long  amid  the 
jewelled  women,  the  impeccable  music  and 
the  subdued  conversation  of  the  Savoy.  In 
fact,  it  is  not  possible  to  linger.  No  sooner 
have  we  hastened  through  the  courses  of  our 
supper  and  started  to  sip  a  liqueur  than  we 
are  suddenly  plunged  into  darkness.  A 
hint!  A  warning!  A  silent  but  eloquent 
reminder  that  the  moral  man  must  hasten 
to  his  bed,  that  midnight  is  upon  us,  that 
respectability  demands  immediate  retire- 
ment. When  the  lights  come  on  again  there 
is  a  gentle  fluttering  of  silken  wraps,  a 
shuffling  of  feet,  a  movement  of  chairs. 
The  crowds,  preparing  to  depart,  are  obey- 
ing that  lofty  English  law  which  makes  eat- 
ing illegal  after  twelve-thirty.     If  you  tarry 


162     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

after  this  signal  for  departure,  a  Parisian 
born  waiter  taps  you  gently  on  the  shoulder 
and  begs  of  you  to  respect  the  majesty  of 
the  law.  Within  ten  minutes  of  the  dark- 
ened warning  the  dining  room  is  empty. 
Liqueurs  are  left  undrunk.  Ices  are  de- 
serted. Half-consumed  salads  are  aban- 
doned. Out  into  the  waiting  taxis  and 
limousines  pours  that  vast  assemblage.  In 
fifteen  minutes  an  atmosphere  of  desolation 
settles  upon  the  streets.  The  day  is 
ended  —  completely,  finally,  irrevocably. 
The  moral  subtleties  of  the  fathers  have 
been  sensed  and  obeyed.  Virtue  snickers 
triumphantly. 

"  And  now?  "  I  demand  of  my  companion. 

"  S-s-s-hl  "  he  warns.  And,  leaning  over 
me,  he  pours  strange  and  lurid  information 
into  my  gaping  ear.  "  Now,"  he  whispers, 
"  to  the  Supper  Clubs,  the  real  night  life 
of  London  —  wine,  women,  song  and 
dance." 

There  is  a  mystery  in  his  mien.     And, 


LONDON  163 

obeying  the  warning  of  an  admonishing 
finger,  I  silentlj^  follow  him  into  a  taxicab. 
A  low,  guttural  order  is  given  to  the  driver, 
the  import  of  which  is  shielded  from  the  in- 
quisitive world  by  my  companion  using  his 
hands  as  a  tube  to  connect  his  mouth  with 
the  ear  of  the  chauffeur. 

I  had  heard  of  these  supper  clubs,  but 
thej^  had  meant  nothing  to  me.  I  rarely 
ate  supper  and  detested  clubs.  Their  litera- 
ture which  frequently  came  to  me,  had  left 
me  cold.  But,  as  I  was  carried  in  the  taxi- 
cab  through  dark  alleys  and  twisted  streets, 
certain  intimations  in  these  printed  invita- 
tions came  back  to  me  with  a  new  meaning. 
Lest  the  iniquity  of  the  London  pleasure 
seeker  be  underestimated,  let  me  supply  you 
with  the  details  of  one  of  these  supper  club 
circulars.  I  will  not  tell  you  the  name  of 
the  club:  it  has  probably  been  changed  by 
now.  No  sooner  do  the  police  put  one  club 
out  of  business  (so  far  as  I  can  see,  merely 
to  gratify  the  demand  of  the  moralists  that 


164     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

all  sinners  be  flayed  in  public)  than  it 
changes  its  name  and  reopens  to  the  old 
membership.  Let  it  be  noted  here  that  in 
order  to  eat  or  drink  in  London  after  twelve- 
thirtj^  at  night  you  must  be  a  member  of 
something;  and  to  become  a  member  of  a 
London  supper  club  is  not  so  easy  a  matter 
as  one  might  imagine.  Traitors  are  forever 
worming  their  way  into  such  societies,  and 
the  management  exercises  typical  British 
discretion  in  selecting  the  devotees  for  its 
illegal  victualing  organisation.  The  club 
of  which  I  speak,  and  whose  circular  —  a 
masterpiece  of  low  cunning  —  lies  before 
me,  has  its  headquarters  on  a  street  so  small 
that  in  giving  the  address  to  even  the  most 
erudite  of  London  geographers  it  is  neces- 
sary to  mention  two  or  three  larger  streets 
in  the  neighbourhood. 

The  object  of  this  club,  it  seems,  is  "  to 
cultivate  a  form  of  art  previously  unknown 
in  England  —  the  Cabaret."  A  noble  and 
worthy  desire!     But  in  the  next  paragraph 


LONDON  165 

we  learn  that  this  aristocratic  uplift  does  not 
begin  until  eleven-thirty,  p.  m.  ;  and  by  read- 
ing further  we  note  the  implication  that  it 
ceases  at  one-thirty  a.  m.,  at  which  hour  the 
cultivation  of  this  unknown  art  —  the  Caba- 
ret —  is  supplanted  by  a  Gipsy  Orchestra, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  International  Min- 
strels. Farther  on  we  learn  that  once  a 
month  the  club  gives  a  dinner  to  its  mem- 
bers, and  that  this  dinner  is  followed  by 
a  "  Recital  Evening  "  in  honour  of  and  "  if 
possible"  (Oh,  subtlety!)  under  the  direc- 
tion of  Lascelles  Abercrombie,  Frank  Har- 
ris, Arthur  Machen,  T.  Sturge  ^Moore,  Ezra 
Pound  and  W.  B.  Yeats.  (Note:  Al- 
though during  the  last  year  I  have  supper- 
clubbed  incessantly  whilst  staying  in 
London,  I  think,  in  all  justice  to  the  above- 
mentioned  illustrious  men,  that  it  should  be 
stated  that  not  once  have  I  had  the  pleasure 
of  being  personally  directed  by  any  one  of 
them. ) 

One  evening  during  the  month,  so  runs 


166     E  U  R  O  P  E    A  F  T  E  R    8  : 1  5 

the  forecast,  will  be  devoted  to  Jolm  David- 
son (I  missed  that  evening)  ;  one  to  Mod- 
ern Faiiy  Tales  (I  somehow  missed  that 
evening  also)  ;  another  to  Fabian  de  Castro 
and  "  Old  Gipsy  Folk  Lore  and  Dance  " 
(Alas,  alas,  that  I  should  have  missed  that 
evening,  too!).  But  this  loss  of  culture,  so 
far  as  I  personally  was  concerned  (and 
other,  too,  I  opine) ,  was  not  accompanied  by 
any  physical  loss;  that  is  to  say,  the  state- 
ment on  the  manifest  that  during  the  per- 
formance there  would  be  available  "  suppers 
and  every  kind  of  refreslmient "  is  emi- 
nently correct,  and  veracious  almost  to  the 
point  of  fault.  Even  when  the  perform- 
ance was  not  given  —  as  seemed  always  to 
be  the  case  —  there  was  no  cessation  in  the 
kitchen  activities.  Suppers  there  were  and, 
what  is  more  to  the  point,  every  kind  of  re- 
freshment. 

The  most  important  item  on  this  manifest 
I  have  saved  until  the  last.  There  is  in  it 
something  of  the  epic,  of  the  beyond,  of  the 


L  O  X  D  O  X  167 

trans  and  the  super.     I  print  it  in  capitals 
that  it  may  the  better  penetrate : 

XO  FIXED  CL05IXG  HOUPtS 

Such  is  the  unlucky  star  under  which  I 
was  bom  that  I  have  escaped  at  these  clubs 
aU  of  the  artistic  and  cultural  performances. 
When  I  have  attended  them  no  light  has 
been  thrown  on  the  Drama,  Opera,  Panto- 
mime, Vocal  Music,  or  ""  such  dehcate  Art 
of  the  past  as  adapts  itself  to  the  frame  of 
an  intimate  stage,  and  more  especially  all 
such  new  art  as  in  the  strength  of  its  sin- 
cerity allows  simplicity."  Xor  has  it  been 
my  luck  to  be  present  during  the  production 
of  "  Lysistrata,"  by  Aristophanes,  or  ''  Bas- 
tien  et  Bastienne."  by  W.  A.  Alozart,  or 
''  Orpheus,"  by  Monteverde,  or  '"  Maestro  di 
Capella,"  by  Pergolese,  or  "  Timon  of 
Athens."  by  PurceU.  X'or  have  I  been 
present  when  an  eminent  technician  has  ren- 
dered Florent  Schmitt's  "  Palais  Hante,"  or 
Arnold    Schoenberg's    "  Pierrot    Lunaire." 


168     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

All  of  which  are  booked  for  production  or 
rendition.  And  yet  I  cannot  feel  that  my 
money  has  been  entirely  wasted.  It  has 
bought  me  "  every  kind  of  refreshment,"  and 
catering  by  Frenchmen,  and  the  company 
of  lovely  ladies  —  ladies,  who,  I  fear,  are 
more  familiar  with  the  works  of  Victoria 
Cross  than  the  works  of  Aristophanes,  and 
whose  ears  are  attuned  to  the  melodies  of 
Theodore  iMoses-Tobani  rather  than  to  the 
diabolical  intricacies  of  Schoenberg's  piano 
pieces. 

Let  us  indulge  ourselves  for  a  moment  in 
what  is  known  to  ritualists  as  a  responsive 
service,  thus: 

Q. —  What  is  a  Supper  Club? 

A. —  A  Supper  Club  is  a  legal  technical- 
ity —  a  system  whereby  the  English  law  is 
misconstrued,  misapplied,  controverted,  dis- 
guised and  outdone.  Specifically,  it  is  a 
combination  restaurant,  cafe,  and  dance  hall, 
the  activities  in  which  begin  at  about  one 
A.  M.  and  continue  so  long  as  there  are  pa- 


LONDON  169 

trons  whose  expenditures  warrant  the  or- 
chestra being  retained  and  the  electric  hghts 
being  left  on.  A  Supper  Club  is  usually 
downstairs,  decorated  in  the  cheap  imitation 
of  a  grape  arbour,  furnished  with  small 
tables,  comfortable  wicker  chairs,  suave  and 
sophisticated  waiters,  an  orchestra  of  from 
six  to  ten  pieces  and  a  small  polished  floor 
for  purposes  of  dancing.  Supper  Clubs  are 
run  to  meet  every  size  of  pocketbook. 
There  are  those  whose  patrons  do  not  know 
the  titillating  effects  of  champagne;  and 
there  are  those  where  the  management  seizes 
no  other  form  of  febrifuge.  Club  members 
naturally  need  no  introduction  to  one  an- 
other, with  tlie  result  that  such  formalities 
are  here  entirely  dispensed  with.  In  the 
better  grade  Supper  Clubs  the  ladies  are  not 
admitted  unless  in  evening  dress,  while  at 
other  establisliments  even  such  sartorial  for- 
malities are  not  insisted  upon.  The  object 
of  a  Supper  Club  is  to  furnish  relaxation  to 
the  tired  business  man,  profits  to  the  man- 


170     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

agement,  usufructs  to  the  police  and  incomes 
to  the  lady  patrons.  The  princij)al  activi- 
ties of  a  Supper  Club  are  (1)  drinking;  (2) 
dancing;  (3)  wooing. 

There  you  have  it.  In  the  Astor  Club  (or 
is  it  the  Palm  Club?  Or  has  the  name  been 
changed  since  spring?)  one  finds  the  higher 
type  of  nocturnal  rounder.  Evening  clothes 
are  obligatory  for  all.  Champagne  and 
expensive  wines  constitute  the  only  bev- 
erages served.  The  orchestra  is  composed 
of  very  creditable  musicians;  and  the  lady 
patrons,  chosen  by  the  management  by 
standards  of  pulchritude  rather  than  of  social 
standing,  are  attestations  to  the  good  taste 
of  the  corpulent  and  amiable  Signor  Bolis, 
owner  and  director.  The  men  whose  money 
pours  into  the  Signor's  coffers  are  obviously 
drawn  from  the  better  class  of  EngHsh 
society  —  clean-cut,  clean-shaven  youths ; 
slick  and  pompous  army  officers;  prosper- 
ous-looking middle-aged  men  who,  even  at 
a  supper  club,  drop  but  httle  of  their  genteel 


LONDON  171 

dignity.  On  my  numerous  visits  to  this 
club  I  failed  to  find  one  member  who  did 
not  have  about  him  in  a  marked  degree  an 
atmosphere  of  deportmental  distinction. 
Even  during  those  final  mellow  hours,  when 
the  dawn  was  sifting  through  the  cracks  of 
the  window  above  the  stairs,  there  was  little 
or  none  of  that  loud-mouthed  boisterousness 
which  follows  on  the  heels  of  alcoholic  im- 
bibitions in  America.  Surfacely  the  Astor 
Club  is  an  orderly  and  decorous  insti- 
tution, and  so  fastidious  were  the  casual 
'*  good  evenings "  between  the  men  and 
women  that  only  tlie  initiated  would  have 
guessed  that  ere  that  meeting  they  had  been 
strangers.  Even  under  the  protection  of 
membership  and  the  police,  the  Englishman 
does  not  know  how  to  laugh.  He  is  deco- 
rous and  stilted  during  the  basest  of  in- 
triguing. 

I  had  become  a  member  of  the  Astor  Club 
after  as  much  red  tape,  investigation  and 
scrutiny  as  would  have  been  exerted  by  a 


172     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

board  of  the  most  exclusive  social  club.  I 
had  signed  my  full  name,  my  address  and 
business,  beneath  which  had  been  appended 
the  names  of  two  of  my  sponsors.  I  had  had 
a  blue  seal  pinned  beneath  my  coat  lapel  and 
an  engraved  card  sewn  in  my  chemise. 
After  which  precautions  and  rigmarole  I 
was  admitted  each  evening  by  the  gorgeous 
St.  Peter  in  red  zouave  breeches  and  drum 
major's  jacket  who  guarded  the  outer  por- 
tal. 

Have  I  given  the  impression  that,  once  in- 
side, I  assumed  virtues  which  ill  became  me ; 
that  I  sat  apart  and  watched  with  critical 
eyes  the  merriment  around  me?  Then  let 
the  impression  be  forever  blasted.  I  am  not 
a  virtuous  man  according  to  theological 
standards.  I  have  been  a  hardened  sinner 
since  birth.  I  gamble.  Beer  is  my  favour- 
ite drink.  It  has  been  flatteringly  whis- 
pered into  my  ear  that  I  dance  beautifully. 
I  read  Celhni  and  Rabelais  and  Boccaccio 
with  unfeigned  delight.     I  am  enchanted  by 


LONDON  173 

the  music  of  Charpentier  and  Wolf-Ferrari. 
I  smoke  strong  cigars.  And  I  do  not  flee  at 
the  sight  of  beautiful  women.  In  short,  I 
am  a  man  of  sin.  Born  in  iniquity  (accord- 
ing to  the  moral  fathers)  I  have  never  been 
regenerated.  Therefore  let  me  admit  that 
the  spirit  of  the  vice  crusader  was  not  mine 
as  a  member  of  the  Astor  Club.  I  spent 
many  a  delightful  half -hour  chatting  with 
Heloise  Dessault,  formerly  at  Fouquet's  in 
Champs  Elysees;  with  INIizzi  Schwarz,  one- 
time frequenter  of  the  Cafe  de  I'Europe,  in 
Vienna;  with  Hedwig  Zinkeisen,  of  Berlin's 
Palais  de  Danse.  .  .  . 

Here  is  a  characteristic  thing  about  the 
London  supper  club:  the  majority  of  the 
girls  and  —  to  London's  shame  let  it  be 
noted  —  the  more  attractive  girls  are  all 
from  the  Continent.  Without  these  femi- 
nine importations  I  doubt  if  the  supper  clubs 
could  be  maintained.  At  the  musical  gal- 
leries —  a  third-rate  supper  place  run  by  the 
Musical  and  Theatrical  Club  at  30  Whit- 


174     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

field  Street,  near  Tottenham  Court  Road, 
W. —  I  was  approached  and  greeted  by  a 
little  French  girl,  whose  knowledge  of  Eng- 
lish was  almost  as  limited  as  is  my  knowledge 
of  Russian. 

But  I  was  forgetting  Elsie  Win  wood,  and 
to  forget  Elsie  in  this  shameless  chronicle 
would  be  disloyalty.  At  the  Astor  Club  one 
evening  I  met  her.  I  realised  then  what 
that  intimating  smile  had  meant  when,  the 
week  before,  she  had  met  me  on  the  stairs. 
I  thereupon  forgot  Leonard,  and  visited  the 
night  debaucheries  of  London  in  the  com- 
pany of  the  grey-eyed,  auburn-haired  Elsie. 
I  have  every  reason  to  beheve  that  ere  I 
sailed  back  to  America  I  had  sounded  the 
depths  of  London's  iniquities.  By  stealth 
and  copious  bribing,  plus  the  influence  of  my 
fair  companion,  I  found  that,  though  it  was 
difficult  it  was  nevertheless  possible  to  eat 
and  drink  and  dance  in  London  till  dawn. 
Yet  at  no  place  to  which  we  went  could  I 
find  anything  unlike  any  other  city  in  the 


LONDON  175 

world  —  the  only  diiFerence  being  that  in 
London  one  must  act  surreptitiously,  while 
other  cities  permit  all  of  the  London  indul- 
gences openly.  Surely  the  night  life  of 
London  is  innocent  enough!  Why  member- 
ship in  expensive  clubs  is  necessary  in  or- 
der for  one  to  en j  oy  it  is  a  question  to  which 
only  British  logic  is  applicable.  The 
searcher  for  thrills  or  the  touring  shock  ab- 
sorber will  find  nothing  in  London  to  rattle 
his  psychic  slats.  Even  the  professional 
moralist,  skilled  in  the  subtle  technicalities 
of  sin,  can  find  nothing  in  England's  capi- 
tal to  make  him  shudder  and  flee.  The  chief 
criticism  against  London  night  life  is  that 
it  is  hypocritical,  that  it  is  sordid,  because  it 
is  denied  and  indulged  in  subterraneanly. 
The  hypocrisy  of  it  all  is  doubly  accentuated 
by  the  curious  fact  that  the  British  public 
permits  trafl^cking  in  the  promenades  of  its 
theatres,  such  as  even  New  York  has  balked 
at  these  manj''  years.  I  refer  to  such 
theatres  —  called  "  music  halls,"  that  they 


176     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

may  be  distinguished  from  the  smaller 
houses  in  which  the  serious  drama  is  pro- 
duced —  as  the  "  Alhambra,"  in  Leicester 
Square ;  the  *'  Empire  Theatre  of  Varieties,'* 
also  in  Leicester  Square;  the  "Palace 
Theatre  of  Varieties  "  on  Cambridge  Circus 
in  Shaftesbury  Avenue;  the  "London 
Pavilion"  in  Piccadilly;  and  the  "Hippo- 
drome "  at  the  corner  of  Cranbourn  Street 
and  Charing  Cross  Road.  Let  us  inspect 
their  vaudeville  oiFerings.  Let  us  snoop 
into  their  wares.  At  these  theatres, 
equipped  with  numerous  and  eminently 
available  cafes,  women,  frail  and  fair,  sit  and 
walk  about  on  the  promenades  and  gener- 
ously waive  introductions  when  the  young 
gentlemen  evince  a  desire  to  speak  to  them. 
But  there  is  no  romance  here.  These 
promenades  are  even  without  illusion. 
Here,  among  the  theatres,  is  where  London 
tries  to  be  Paris.  Just  as  she  tries  to  be 
New  York  in  Regent  Street.  Here  is  where 
the  most  moral  town  in  Christendom  dis- 


LONDON  177 

covers  her  native  hoggishness.     Here  is  the 
great  slave  market  of  the  English. 

But  we  are  out  for  vaudeville  and  not  for 
slaves,  and  so  we  pursue  our  virtuous  way 
up  the  stream  of  amiable  fair  until  we  reach 
the  Palace  Music  Hall,  where  a  poster  ad- 
vertising a  Russian  dancer  inspires  us  to 
part  with  half  a  dozen  shillings.  Luxurious 
seats  of  red  velvet,  wide  enough  for  a  pair 
of  German  contraltos,  invite  to  slumber,  and 
the  juggler  on  the  stage  does  the  rest. 
Twenty  times  he  heaves  a  cannon  ball  into 
the  air,  and  twenty  times  he  catches  it  safely 
on  his  neck.  The  Russian  dancer,  we  find, 
is  booked  for  ten-thirty,  and  it  is  now  but 
eight-fifty.  "Why  wait?"  says  the  fair 
Elsie.  "  It  will  never  kill  him."  So  we  try 
another  hall  —  and  find  a  lady  with  a  face 
like  a  tomato  singing  a  song  about  the  derbj^ 
to  an  American  tune  that  was  stale  in  1907. 
Yet  another,  and  we  are  in  the  midst  of  a 
tedious  ballet  founded  upon  "  Carmen,"  with 
the  music  reduced  to  jigtime  and  a  flute 


178     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

playing  out  of  tune.  A  fourth  —  and  we 
suffer  a  pair  of  comedians  who  impersonate 
Americans  by  saying  "  Naow "  and 
"  Amurican."  When  they  break  into  "  ]My 
Cousin  Carus'  "  we  depart  by  the  fire  escape. 
We  have  now  spent  eight  dollars  on  diver- 
tisement  and  have  failed  to  be  diverted. 
We  take  one  more  chance,  and  pick  a  prize 
—  Little  Tich,  to  wit,  a  harlequin  no  more 
than  four  feet  in  his  shoes,  but  as  full  of 
humour  as  a  fraternal  order  funeral. 

Before  these  few  lines  find  you  well,  Lit- 
tle Tich,  I  dare  say,  ^^all  be  on  Broadway, 
drawing  his  four  thousand  stage  dollars  a 
week  and  longing  for  a  decent  cut  of  mut- 
ton. But  we  saw  him  on  his  native  heath, 
uncontaminated  by  press  agents,  unboomed 
by  a  vociferous  press,  undefiled  by  contact 
with  acquitted  murderers,  eminent  divorcees, 
"  perfect  "  women,  returned  explorers  who 
never  got  where  they  went,  and  suchlike 
prodigies  and  nuisances  of  the  Broadway 
'alls.     Tich,  as  I  have  said,  is  but  four  feet 


LONDON  179 

from  sole  to  crown,  but  there  is  little  of  the 
dwarf's  distortion  about  him.  He  is  simply 
a  man  in  miniature :  in  aspect,  much  like  any 
other  man.  His  specialty  is  impersonation. 
First  he  appears  as  a  drill  sergeant,  then  as 
a  headwaiter,  then  as  a  gas  collector,  then  as 
some  other  familiar  fellow.  But  what  keen 
insight  and  penetrating  humour  in  eveiy  de- 
tail of  the  picture !  How  mirth  bubbles  out  I 
Here  we  have  burlesque,  of  course,  and  there 
is  even  some  horseplay  in  it,  but  at  bottom 
how  deft  it  is,  and  how  close  to  hfe,  and  how 
wholly  and  irresistibly  comical!  You  must 
see  him  do  the  headwaiter  —  hear  him 
blarney  and  flabbergast  the  complaining 
guest,  observe  him  reckon  up  his  criminal 
bill,  see  the  subtle  condescension  of  his  tip 
grabbing.  This  Tich,  I  assure  you,  is  no 
common  mountebank,  but  a  first-rate  comic 
actor.  Given  legs  eighteen  inches  longer 
and  an  equator  befitting  the  role,  he  would 
make  the  best  FalstafF  of  our  generation. 
Even  as  he  stands,  he  would  do  wonders  with 


180     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

Bob  Acres  —  and  I'd  give  four  dollars  any 
day  to  see  him  play  Marguerite  Gautier. 

But  enough  of  theatres!  There  are  two 
night  restaurants  in  London  which  should 
be  mentioned  here.  Let  what  little  fame 
they  may  attain  from  being  set  down  in  these 
pages  be  theirs.  They  more  nearly  approxi- 
mate to  youthful  whole-heartedness  than  any 
institutions  in  the  city.  Perhaps  this  is  be- 
cause they  are  so  distinctly  Continental,  be- 
cause they  are  almost  stripped  of  anything 
(save  the  language  spoken)  w^hich  savours 
of  London  and  the  British  temperament. 
They  are  the  Villa  Villa,  at  37  GeiTard 
Street  (once  the  residence  of  Edmund 
Burke),  and  JNIaxim's,  at  30  Wardour 
Street.  Their  reputations  are  far  from 
spotless,  and  English  society  gives  them  a 
wide  berth.  Because  of  this  they  have  be- 
come the  meeting  place  of  clandestine  lovers. 
Here  is  the  genuine  laughter  and  the  way- 
ward noise  of  youth.  Nine  out  of  every  ten 
of  their  patrons  are  young,  and  four  out  of 


LONDON  181 

eveiy  five  of  the  girls  are  pretty.  Music 
is  continuous  and  lively,  and  they  possess  an 
intimacy  found  only  in  Parisian  cafes.  Do 
I  imply  that  they  are  free  from  sordidness 
and  commercialism?  They  are  not.  Far 
from  it.  There  is  no  night  life  in  London 
entirely  free  from  these  two  disintegrating 
factors.  But  their  simulacrum  of  gaiety  is 
far  from  obvious.  When  the  fifteen-minute 
warning  for  evacuation  is  given  a  good-na- 
tured cheer  goes  up,  and  a  peal  of  laughter 
which  shakes  the  chandeliers  and  drowns  out 
the  musicians.  The  crowd  at  least  sees  the 
humour  of  the  closing  law,  and,  being  unable 
to  repeal  it,  laughs  at  it.  In  the  Villa  Villa 
and  Maxim's,  hands  meet  hngeringly  over 
the  table;  faces  are  near  together;  and  a 
pubHc  stolen  kiss  is  not  a  rarity.  When  the 
doors  of  these  restaurants  are  locked  on  a 
deserted  room  the  exiles  do  not  go  deco- 
rously and  dolorously  home.  In  another 
hour  you  will  see  many  of  these  same  cou- 
ples dancing  at  the  supper  clubs. 


182     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

Here  we  are  again  in  Signer  Bolis's  estab- 
lishment —  which  means  that  we  have  made 
the  round.  .  .  .  Elsie  is  yawning.  I,  too, 
am  tired  of  the  dance  and  sick  of  the  taste  of 
champagne.  I  motion  the  waiter  and  pay 
the  bill.  I  draw  Elsie's  long  coat  about  her, 
and  we  pass  out  into  the  clear  London  night. 
We  walk  home  circuitously  —  down  Cran- 
bourn  Street  and  into  Charing  Cross  Road 
where  it  turns  past  the  National  Gallery  into 
St.  Martin's  place.  Through  Duncannon 
Street,  we  enter  the  Strand,  now  almost  de- 
serted save  for  a  few  stray  figures  and  a 
hurrying  taxicab.  We  then  turn  into 
Vilhers  Street,  and  in  a  few  minutes  w^e  are 
on  York  Terrace,  overlooking  the  Thames 
embankment.  The  elm  trees  and  the 
beeches  stand  about  like  green  ghosts  in  the 
pale  night.  At  the  edge  of  the  water  Cleo- 
patra's Needle  is  a  black  silhouette.  We 
should  like  to  walk  through  the  Gardens  in 
the  starlight,  but  the  formidable  iron  gates 
are   locked   against   us.     So   we   tui'n   up 


LONDON  183 

Robert  Street  into  Adelphi  Terrace.     We 
lean  for  a  moment  against  the  railing. 

There  below  us,  a  crinkling  tapestry  of 
gilts,  silvers  and  coppery  pinks,  is  ancient 
Father  Thames,  the  emperor  and  archbishop 
of  all  earthly  streams.  There  are  the  harsh 
waters  (but  now  so  soft  I)  that  the  Romans 
braved,  watching  furtively  for  blue  savages 
along  the  banks,  and  the  Danes  after  the 
Romans,  and  the  Normans  after  the  Danes, 
and  innumerable  companies  of  hardy  sea- 
farers in  the  long  years  following.  At  this 
lovely  turning,  where  the  river  flouts  the 
geography  books  by  flowing  almost  due 
northward  for  a  mile,  bloody  battles  must 
have  been  fought  in  those  old,  forgotten, 
far-off  times  —  and  battles,  I  venture,  not 
always  ending  with  Roman  cheers.  One 
pictures  some  young  naval  lieutenant,  just 
out  of  the  Tiber  Annapolis,  and  brash  and 
nosey  hke  his  kind  —  one  sees  some  such 
youngster  pushing  thus  far  in  his  light 
craft,  and  perhaps  going  around  on  the  mud 


184     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

of  the  south  bank,  and  there  fighting  to  the 
death  with  Britons  of  the  fog-wrapped 
marshes,  "  hairy,  horrible,  human."  And 
one  sees,  too,  liis  return  to  the  fleet  so  snug 
at  Gravesend,  an  imperfect  carcass  lashed 
to  a  log,  the  pioneer  and  prophet  of  all  that 
multitude  of  dead  men  who  have  since 
bobbed  down  this  dirty  tide.  Dead  men, 
and  men  alive  —  men  full  of  divine  courage 
and  high  hopes,  the  great  dreamers  and  ex- 
perimenters of  the  race.  Out  of  this  slug- 
gish sewer  the  Anglo-Saxon,  that  fabulous 
creature,  has  gone  forth  to  his  blundering 
conquest  of  the  earth.  And  conquering,  he 
has  brought  back  his  loot  to  the  place  of  his 
beginning.  The  great  liners  flashing  along 
their  policed  and  humdrum  lanes,  have  long 
since  abandoned  London,  but  every  turn  of 
the  tide  brings  up  her  fleet  of  cargo  ships, 
straggling,  weather-worn  and  grey,  trudg- 
ing in  from  ports  far-flung  and  incredible  — 
Surinam,  Punta  Arenas,  Antofagasta,  Port 
Banana,    Tang-chow,    Noumea,    Sarawak. 


LONDON  185 

If  you  think  that  commerce,  yielding  to  steel 
and  steam,  has  lost  all  romance,  just  give  an 
idle  day  or  two  to  London  docks.  The  very 
names  upon  the  street  signs  are  as  exotic  as 
a  breath  of  frankincense.  Mango  Wharf, 
Kamchatka  Wharf,  Havannah  Street,  the 
Borneo  Stores,  Greenland  Dock,  Sealers' 
Yard  —  on  all  sides  are  these  suggestions  of 
adventure  beyond  the  sky-rim,  of  soft,  tropi- 
cal moons  and  cold,  arctic  stars,  of  strange 
peoples,  strange  tongues  and  strange  lands. 
In  one  Limehouse  barroom  you  will  find 
sailors  from  Behring  Straits  and  the  China 
Sea,  the  Baltic  and  the  River  Plate,  the 
Congo  and  Labrador,  all  calling  London 
home,  all  paying  an  orang-outang's  devo- 
tions to  the  selfsame  London  barmaid,  all 
drenched  and  paralysed  by  London 
beer.  .  .  . 

The  kaiserstadt  of  the  world,  this  grim 
and  grey  old  London!  And  the  river  of 
rivers,  this  oily,  sluggish,  inmiemorial 
Thames !    At  its  widest,  I  suppose,  it  might 


186     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

be  doubled  upon  itself  and  squeezed  into  the 
lower  Potomac,  and  no  doubt  the  jNIissis- 
sippi,  even  at  St.  Louis,  could  swallow  it 
without  rising  a  foot  —  but  it  leads  from 
London  Bridge  to  every  coast  and  head- 
land of  the  world !  Of  all  the  pathways  used 
by  man  this  is  the  longest  and  the  greatest. 
And  not  onlj'-  the  greatest,  but  the  loveliest. 
Grant  the  Rhine  its  castles,  the  Hudson  its 
hills,  the  Amazon  its  stupendous  i-eaches. 
Xot  one  of  these  can  match  the  wonder  and 
splendour  of  frail  St.  Stephen's,  wrapped 
in  the  mists  of  a  summer  night,  or  the  cool 
dignity  of  St.  Paul's,  crowning  its  historic 
mount,  or  the  iron  beauty  of  the  bridges,  or 
the  magic  of  the  ancient  docks,  or  the  twin- 
kling lights  o'  London,  sweeping  upward  to 
the  stars.  .  .  . 


PARIS 


PARIS 

FOR  the  American  professional  seeker 
after  the  night  romance  of  Paris,  the 
French  have  a  phrase  which,  be  it  soever 
inelegant,  retains  still  a  brilliant  verity. 
The  phrase  is  ^^  une  helle  poire/''  And  its 
Yankee  equivalent  is  "  sucker." 

The  French,  as  the  world  knows,  are  a 
kindly,  forgiving  people;  and  though  they 
cast  the  epithet,  they  do  so  in  manner  tol- 
erant and  with  light  arpeggio  ■ —  of  Yankee 
sneer  and  bitterness  containing  not  a  trace. 
They  cast  it  as  one  casts  a  coin  into  the  hand 
of  some  maundering  beggar,  with  com- 
mingled oh-wells  and  philosophical  pity. 
For  in  the  Frenchman  of  the  Paris  of  to- 
day, though  there  run  not  the  blood  of 
Lafayette,  and  though  he  detest  Americans 

189 


190     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

as  he  detests  the  Germans,  he  yet,  detesting, 
sorrows  for  them,  sees  them  as  mere  misled 
yokels,  uncosmopolite,  obstreperous,  of 
comical  posturing  in  ostensible  un-Latin 
lech,  vainglorious  and  spying  —  children 
into  whose  hands  has  fallen  Zola,  children 
adream,  somnambulistic,  groping  rashly  for 
those  things  out  of  life  that,  groped  for,  are 
lost  —  that  may  come  only  as  life  comes, 
naturally,  calmly,  inevitably. 

But  the  Frenchman,  he  never  laughs  at 
us;  that  would  his  culture  forbid.  And,  if 
he  smile,  his  mouth  goes  placid  before  the 
siege.  His  attitude  is  the  attitude  of  one 
beholding  a  Comstock  come  to  the  hill  of 
Horselberg  in  Thuringia,  there  to  sniif  and 
snicker  in  Venus's  crimson  court.  His  atti- 
tude is  the  attitude  of  one  beholding  a  Tris- 
tan 671  voyage  for  a  garden  of  love  and 
roses  he  can  never  reach.  His  attitude, 
the  attitude  of  an  old  and  understanding 
professor,  shaking  his  head  musingly  as 
his  tender  pupils,  unmellowed  yet  in  the 


PARIS  191 

autumnal  fragrances  of  life,  giggle  covertly 
over  the  pages  of  Balzac  and  Flaubert,  over 
the  nudes  of  Manet,  over  even  the  innocent 
yearnings  of  the  bachelor  Chopin. 

The  American,  loosed  in  the  streets  of 
Paris  by  night,  however  sees  in  himself  an- 
other and  a  worldlier  image.  Into  the  crev- 
ices of  his  fiat  house  in  his  now  far-away  New 
York  have  penetrated  from  time  to  time 
vague  whisperings  of  the  laxative  deviltries, 
the  bold  saucinesses  of  the  city  by  the  Seine. 
And  hither  has  he  come,  as  comes  a  jack  tar 
to  West  Street  after  protracted  cruise  upon 
the  ceHbate  seas,  to  smell  out,  as  a  very  devil 
of  a  fellow,  quotation-marked  life  and  its 
attributes.  What  is  romance  to  such  a 
soul  —  even  were  romance,  the  romance  of 
this  Paris,  uncurtained  to  him?  Which,  for- 
sooth, the  romance  seldom  is;  for  though  it 
may  go  athwart  his  path,  he  sees  it  not,  he 
feels  it  not,  he  knows  it  not,  can  know  it  not, 
for  what  it  is. 

Romance  to  him  means  only  an  elaborate 


192     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

and  circumspect  winking  at  some  perfectly 
obvious  and  duly  checked  little  baggage;  it 
means  to  him  only  a  scarlet-cushioned  seat 
along  the  mirrored  wall  of  the  Cafe  Ameri- 
cain,  a  thousand  incandescents,  a  string 
quartette  sighing  through  "  Un  Peu 
d' Amour,"  a  quart  of  "  wine."  Romance  to 
him  is  a  dinner  jacket  prowling  by  night  into 
the  comic  opera  (American  libretto)  pur- 
heus  of  modern  Montmartre,  with  its  spuri- 
ous extravaganzas  of  rouge  and  roister, 
with  its  spider  webs  of  joy.  For  him,  there 
is  romance  in  the  pleasure  girls  who  sit  at 
the  tables  touching  St.  Michel  before  the 
Cafe  d'Harcourt,  making  patient  pretence 
of  sipping  their  Byrrh  until  a  passing  "  Eh, 
hebe "  assails  their  tjTnpani  with  its  sug- 
gested tintinnabulation  of  needed  francs: 
for  him  — "  models."  And  the  Bullier, 
ghost  now  of  the  old  Bullier  where  once  ht- 
tle  Luzanne,  the  inspiration  of  a  hundred 
palettes,  tripped  the  polka,  the  new  Bullier 
with   its   coloured   electricity   and   ragtime 


PARIS  193 

band  and  professional  treaders  of  the  Ave- 
nue de  rObservatoire,  is  eke  romance  to  his 
nostril.  And  so,  too,  he  finds  it  atop  the 
Rue  Lepic  in  the  now  sham  Mill  of  Galette, 
a  capon  of  its  former  self,  where  Germaine 
and  Florie  and  Mireille,  veteran  battle- 
axes  of  the  Rue  Victor  Masse,  pose  as  mod- 
est little  workgirls  of  the  Batignolles. 
And  so,  too,  in  that  loud,  crass  annex  of 
Broadway,  the  Cafe  de  Paris  —  and  in  the 
Moulin  Rouge,  which  died  forever  from  the 
earth  a  dozen  years  ago  w^hen  the  architect 
Niermans  seduced  the  place  with  the  "  art 
nouveau  "—and  amid  the  squalid  hussies  of 
the  fake  Tabarin  —  and  in  the  Rue  Royale, 
at  Maxim's,  with  its  Tzigane  orchestra  com- 
posed of  German  gipsies  and  its  toy  bal- 
loons made  by  the  Elite  Novelty  Co.  of  Jer- 
sey City,  U.  S.  A. 

The  American  notion  of  Paris  under  the 
guardianship  of  the  French  stars,  of  Paris 
caressed  by  the  night  wind  come  down  from 
Longchamps  and  filtered  through  the  chest- 


194     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

nut  branches  of  Boulogne,  is  usually 
achieved  from  the  Sons  of  Moses  who,  in 
spats  and  sticks,  adorn  the  entrance  of  the 
Olympia  and  the  sidewalks  of  the  Cafe  de 
la  Paix  and  interrogatively  guide-sir  the 
passing  foreign  mob.  This  Paris  consists 
chiefly  of  a  view  of  the  exotic  bathtub  of  the 
good  King  Edward  of  Britain,  quondam 
Prince  of  Wales,  in  the  celebrated  house  of 
the  crystal  staircase  in  the  Rue  Chabanais, 
of  one  of  the  two  "  mysterious  "  midinette 
speak-easys  in  the  dark  Rue  de  Berlin 
(where  the  midinettes  range  from  the  ten- 
der age  of  forty-five  to  fifty),  of  the  cellar 
of  the  tavern  near  the  Pantheon  with  its 
tawdry  wenches  and  beer  and  butt-soaked 
floors  —  of  tawdry  resorts  and  tawdrier 
peoples. 

Do  I  treat  of  but  a  single  class  of  Ameri- 
cans? Well,  maybe  so.  But  the  other 
class  —  and  the  class  after  that  —  think  you 
these  are  so  different?  So  different,  goes 
my  meaning,  in  the  matter  of  appropriat- 


PARIS  195 

ing  to  themselves  something  of  the  deep  and 
very  true  romance  that  sings  still  in  the 
shadowed  corners  of  this  one-time  Flavia 
of  capitals,  that  sounds  still,  as  sounds  some 
far-off  steamboat  whistle  wail  in  the  death- 
quiet  of  night,  pleading  and  pathetic,  that 
calls  still  to  the  dreamers  of  all  the  world 
from  out  the  tomb  of  faded  triumphs  and 
forgotten  memories? 

True,  alas,  it  is,  that  gone  is  the  Paris 
of  Paris's  glory  —  gone  that  Paris  that 
called  to  Louise  with  the  luring  melody  of 
a  zithered  soul.  True,  alas,  it  is,  that  the 
Paris  of  the  Guerbois,  with  its  crowd  of 
other  days  —  Degas  and  Cladel  and  Astruc 
and  the  rest  of  them  —  is  no  more.  Gone, 
as  well,  and  gone  forever  is  the  cabaret  of 
Bruant,  him  of  the  line  of  rran9ois  Villon 
—  now  become  a  place  for  the  vulgar  og- 
lings  of  Cook's  tourists  taxicabbing  along 
the  Boulevard  Rochechouart.  Gone  the 
wild  loves,  the  bravuras,  the  camaraderie 
of  warm  night  skies  in  the  old  Boulevard  de 


196     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

Clichy,  supplanted  now  with  a  strident  con- 
catenation of  Coney  Island  sideshows;  the 
"  Cabaret  de  I'Enfer,"  with  its  ballyhoo 
made  up  as  Satan,  the  "  Cabaret  du  Ciel," 
with  its  "  grotto "  smelling  of  Sherwin- 
Williams'  light  blue  paint,  the  "  Cabaret  du 
Neant,"  with  its  Atlantic  City  plate  glass 
trick  of  metamorphosing  the  visiting  doodle 
into  a  skeleton,  the  "  Lune  Rousse,"  with  its 
mean  Marie  Lloyd  species  of  lyrical  con- 
cupiscence, the  "  Quat'-z-Arts,"  with  its 
charge  of  two  francs  the  glass  of  beer  and 
its  concourse  of  loafers  dressed  up  like 
Harry  B.  Smith  "  poets,"  in  black  velvet, 
corduroy  grimpants  and  wiggy  hirsutal  cas- 
cades to  impress  "  atmosphere "  on  the 
minds  of  the  attendant  citizenry  of  Louis- 
ville. And  gone,  too,  with  the  song  of 
Clichy,  is  the  song  from  the  heart  of  St. 
Michel,  the  song  from  the  heart  of  St.  Ger- 
main. "  Tea  rooms,"  operated  by  Ameri- 
can old  maids,  have  poked  their  noses  into 
these  once  genuine  boulevards  .  .  .  and,  as 


PARIS  197 

if  giving  a  further  fillip  to  the  scenery, 
clothing  shops  with  windows  haughtily  re- 
vealing the  nobby  art  of  Kuppenheimer, 
postcard  shops  laden  to  the  sill's  edge  with 
lithographs  disclosing  erstwhile  Saturday 
Evening  Post  cover  heroines,  and  case  upon 
case  displaying  in  lordly  enthusiasm  the 
choicest  cranial  confections  of  the  house  of 
Stetson.  .  .  . 

What  once  on  a  time  was,  is  no  more. 
But  Romance,  notwithstanding,  has  not  yet 
altogether  deserted  the  Paris  that  was  her 
loyal  sweetheart  in  the  days  when  the  tri- 
colour was  a  prouder  flag,  its  subjects  a 
prouder  people.  There  is  something  of  the 
old  spirit  of  it,  the  old  verve  of  it,  lin- 
gering still,  if  not  in  Montmartre,  if  not  in 
the  edisoned  highways  of  the  Left  Bank,  if 
not  in  the  hitherward  boulevards,  then  still 
somewhere.  But  where,  ask  you,  is  this 
somewhere?  And  I  shall  tell  you.  This 
somewhere  is  in  the  eyes  of  the  Parisian  girl; 
this    somewhere    is    in    the    heart    of    the 


198     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

Parisian  man.  There,  romance  has  not 
died  —  one  must  beheve,  will  never  die. 

And,  having  told  you,  I  seem  to  hear  you 
laugh.  "  We  thought,"  I  would  seem  to 
hear  you  say,  "  that  he  was  going  to  tell  us 
of  concrete  places,  of  concrete  byways, 
where  this  so  gorgeous  romance  yet  tar- 
ries." And  you  are  aggrieved  and  dis- 
appointed. But  I  bid  you  patience.  I  am 
still  too  young  to  be  sentimental:  so  have 
you  no  fear.  And  yet,  bereft  of  all  of  sen- 
timentality, I  r^-issue  you  my  challenge: 
this  somewhere  is  in  the  eyes  of  the  Parisian 
girl,  this  somewhere  is  in  the  heart  of  the 
Parisian  man. 

By  Parisian  girl  I  mean  not  the  order  of 
Austrian  wenches  who  twist  their  tummies 
in  elaborate  tango  epilepsies  in  the  Place 
Pigalle,  nor  the  order  of  female  curios  who 
expectorate  with  all  the  gusto  of  American 
drummers  in  La  Hanneton,  nor  yet  the 
Forty-niners  who  foregather  in  the  private 
entrance   of   16   Rue   Frochot.     I   do   not 


PARIS  199 

mean  the  dead-eyed  joy  jades  of  the  cafe 
concerts  in  the  Champs  Elysees.  I  do  not 
mean  the  crow-souled  scows  who  steam  by 
night  in  the  channels  oiF  the  Place  de  la 
Madeleine.  The  girl  I  mean  is  that  girl 
you  notice  leaning  against  the  onyx  balus- 
trade at  the  Opera  —  that  one  with  lips  of 
Burgundy  and  cheeks  the  colour  of  roses  in 
oHve  oil.  The  girl  I  mean  is  that  phantom 
girl  ypu  see,  from  your  table  before  the  Ro- 
tonde  across  the  way,  slipping  past  the  iron 
grilling  of  the  Luxembourg  Gardens  — 
that  girl  with  faded  blouse  but  with  eyes, 
you  feel,  a-colour  with  the  lightning  of  the 
world's  jewels.  The  girl  I  mean  is  that  girl 
you  catch  sight  of  —  but  what  matters  it 
where?  Or  what  she  leans  against  or  what 
she  wears  or  what  her  lips  and  eyes?  If  you 
know  Paris,  you  know  her.  Whether  in 
the  Allee  des  Acacias  or  in  the  boulevard 
Montparnasse,  she  is  the  same:  the  real 
French  girl  of  still  abiding  Parisian  ro- 
mance; the  real  French  girl  in  whose  baby 


200     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

daughter,  some  day,  will  be  perpetuated  the 
laughter  of  the  soul  of  a  city  that  will  not 
fade.  And  in  whose  baby  girl  in  turn, 
some  day  long  after  that,  it  will  be  born 
anew. 

Ah,  me,  the  cynic  in  you!  Do  you  pro- 
test that  the  girl  of  the  balustrade,  the  girl 
of  the  Luxembourg,  are  very  probably 
American  girls  here  for  visit?  Well,  well! 
Tu  te  paye  ma  tete.  Who  has  heard  of 
romance  in  an  American  girl  ?  I  grant  you, 
and  I  make  grant  quickly,  that  the  Ameri- 
can girl  is,  in  the  mass,  more  ocularly  mas- 
saging, more  nimble  with  the  niblick,  more 
more  in  several  wayiS  than  her  sister  of 
France;  but  in  her  eyes,  however  otherwise 
lovely,  is  glint  of  steel  where  should  be 
dreaming  pansies,  in  her  heart  reverie  of 
banknotes  where  should  be  billets  douce. 

And  so  by  Parisian  man  I  mean,  not  the 
chorus  men  of  Des  Italiens,  betalcumed  and 
odoriferous  with  the  scents  of  Pinaud,  those 


PARIS  201 

weird  birds  who  are  guarded  by  the  casual 
Yankee  as  typical  and  symbolic  of  the  na- 
tion. Nor  do  I  mean  the  fish-named,  liver- 
faced  denizens  of  the  region  down  from  the 
Opera,  those  spaniel-eyed  creatures  who 
live  in  the  tracks  of  petite  Sapphos,  who 
spend  the  days  in  cigarette  smoke,  the 
nights  in  scheming  ambuscade.  Nor  yet 
the  Austrian  cross-breeds  who  are  to  be  be- 
held behind  the  gulasch  in  the  Rue  d'Hau- 
teville,  nor  the  semi-Milanese  who  sibilate 
the  minestrone  at  Aldegani's  in  the  Passage 
des  Panoramas,  nor  the  Frenchified  Span- 
iards and  Portuguese  who  gobble  the  guis- 
illo  madrilefio  at  Don  Jose's  in  the  Rue 
Helder,  nor  the  half-French  Cossacks  amid 
the  potrohlia  in  the  Restaurant  Cubat,  nor 
the  Orientals  with  the  waxed  moustachios 
and  girlish  waists  who  may  be  obsen^ed  at 
moontide  dawdling  over  their  cafe  a  la 
Turque  at  Madame  Louna  Sonnak's. 
These  are  the  Frenchmen  of  Paris  no  more 


202     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

than  the  habitues  of  Back  Bay  are  the 
Americans  of  Boston,  no  more  than  the 
Americans  of  Boston  are  —  Americans. 

^p  *T*  '1^  '^ 

It  is  night  in  Paris!  It  is  night  in  the 
Paris  of  a  thousand  memories.  And  the 
Place  de  la  Concorde  lies  silver  blue  under 
springtime  skies.  And  up  the  Champs 
Elysees  the  elfin  lamps  shimmer  in  the  moist 
leaves  like  a  million  topaz  tears.  And  the 
boulevards  are  a-thrill  with  the  melody  of 
living.  Are  you,  now  far  away  and  deep 
in  the  American  winter,  with  me  once  again 
in  memorj^  over  the  seas  in  this  warm  and 
wonderful  and  fugitive  world?  And  do 
you  hear  with  me  again  the  twang  of  guitars 
come  out  the  hedges  of  the  Avenue  Ma- 
rigny?  And  do  you  smell  with  me  the 
rare  perfume  of  the  wet  asphalt  and 
feel  with  me  the  wanderlust  in  the 
spirit  soul  of  the  Seine?  Through  the 
frost   on   the   windows   can   you   look   out 


PARIS  203 

across  the  world  and  see  with  me  once  again 
the  trysting  tables  in  the  Boulevard  Ras- 
pail,  a-whisper  with  soft  and  wondrous 
monosyllables,  and  can  you  hear  little  Ninon 
laughing  and  Fleurette  sighing,  and  little 
Helene  (just  passed  nineteen)  weeping  be- 
cause life  is  so  short  and  death  so  long? 
Are  you  young  again  and  do  memories  sing 
in  your  brain?  And  does  the  snow  melt 
from  the  landscape  of  your  life  and  in  its 
place  bloom  again  the  wild  poppies  of  the 
Saint  Cloud  roadways,  telegraphing  their 
drowsy  content  through  the  evening  air  to 
Paris? 

Or  is  the  only  rosemary  of  Paris  that  you 
have  carried  back  with  you  the  memory  of 
a  two-step  danced  with  some  painted  bawd 
at  the  Abbaye,  the  memory  of  the  night 
when  you  drank  six  quarts  of  champagne 
without  once  stopping  to  prove  to  the  on- 
lookers in  the  Rat  Mort  that  an  American 
can  drink  more  than  a  damned  Frenchman, 


204     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

the  memory  of  that  fine  cut  of  roast  beef  you 

succeeded  in  obtaining  at  the  Ritz? 

*         *         *         * 

Did  I  mention  food?  Ah-h-h,  the  night 
romance  of  Parisian  nutriment!  Parisian, 
said  I.  Not  the  low  hybrid  dishes  of  the 
bevy  of  British-American  hotels  that  sur- 
round the  Place  Vendome  and  march  up  the 
Rue  de  Castiglione  or  of  such  nondescripts 
as  the  Tavernes  Roy  ale  and  Anglaise  —  but 
Paiisian.  For  instance,  my  good  man, 
caneton  a  la  higarade,  or  duckling  garnished 
with  the  oozy,  saliva-provoking  sauce  of  the 
peel  of  bitter  oranges.  There  is  a  dish  for 
you,  a  philter  wherewith  to  woo  the  appe- 
tite I  For  example,  my  good  fellow,  sole 
Momay  (no,  no,  not  the  "  sole  Mornay " 
you  know!),  the  sole  Mornay  whose  each 
and  every  drop  of  shrimp  sauce  carries  with 
it  to  palate  and  nostril  the  faint  suspicion 
of  champagne.  Oysters,  too.  Not  the 
Portuguese  —  those  arrogant  shysters  of  a 
proud  line  —  but  the  Arcachons  Marennes 


PARIS  205 

and  Cancales  superieures:  baked  in  the 
shell  with  mushrooms  and  cheese,  and 
washed  down  exquisitely  with  the  juice  of 
grapes  goldened  by  the  French  suns.  And 
salmon,  cold,  with  sauce  Criliche;  and  arti- 
chokes made  sentimental  with  that  Beetho- 
ven-like fluid  orchestrated  out  of  caviar, 
grated  sweet  almonds  and  small  onions ;  and 
ham  boiled  in  claret  and  touched  up  with 
sjDinach  au  gratin.  The  romance  of  it  — 
and  the  wonder! 

But  other  things,  alackaday,  must  con- 
cern us.  Au  'voir,  my  beloveds,  au  'voir! 
Au  'voir  to  thee.  La  Matelote,  thou  fair  and 
fair  and  toothsome  fish  stew,  and  to  thee, 
Perdreau  Farci  a  la  Stuert,  thou  aristo- 
cratic twelve-franc  seducer  of  the  esopha- 
gus!   Au  'voir,  my  adored  ones,  au  'voir. 

Viola!  And  now  again  are  we  afield 
under  the  French  moon.  What  if  no  more 
are  the  grisettes  of  Paul  de  Kock  and  Mur- 
ger  to  fascinate  the  eye  with  wistful  dia- 
bleries?    What  if  no  more  the  old  Vachette 


206     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

of  the  Boul'  Mich'  and  the  Rue  des  Ecoles, 
last  of  the  cafes  litteraires,  once  the  guz- 
zling ground  of  Voltaire  and  Rousseau  and 
many  such  another  profound  imbiber? 
What  if  no  more  the  simple  Montmartroise 
of  other  times,  and  in  her  stead  the  elaborate 
wench  of  Le  Coq  d'Or,  redolent  of  new 
satin  and  parfum  Dolce  Mia?  Other  times, 
other  manners  —  and  other  girls !  And  if, 
forsooth,  Ninette  and  Manon,  Gabrielle  and 
Fifi,  arch  little  mousmes  of  another  and 
ma3^hap  lovelier  day,  have  long  since  gone 
to  put  deeper  soul  into  the  cold  harps  of  the 
other  angels  of  heaven,  there  still  are  with 
us  other  Ninettes,  other  Manons  and  other 
Gabrielles  and  Fifis.  "  La  vie  de  Boheme  " 
is  but  a  cobwebbed  memory:  yet  its  hosts, 
though  scattered  and  scarred,  in  spirit  go 
marching  on.  The  Marseillaise  of  romance 
is  not  stilled.  In  the  little  Yvette  whose 
heart  is  weeping  because  the  glass  case  in 
the  Cafe  du  Dome  this  day  reveals  no  letter 
from  her  so  grand  Andre,  gone  to  Cassis 


PARIS  207 

and  there  to  transfer  the  sapphire  of  the 
sea  and  mesmerism  of  roses  to  canvas,  is 
the  heart  of  the  httle  Yvette  of  the  Second 
Empire.  In  the  hps  of  Diane  that  smile 
and  in  the  eyes  of  Helene  that  dream  and 
in  the  toes  of  Therese  that  dance  is  the  smile, 
is  the  dream,  is  the  dance  in  echo  of  the  Paris 
of  a  day  bygone. 

Look  you  with  me  into  the  Rue  de  la 
Gaite,  into  the  Gaite-Montparnasse,  still 
comparatively  hberated  from  the  intrusion 
of  foreign  devils,  and  say  to  me  if  there  is 
not  something  of  old  Paris  here.  Not  the 
Superba,  Fantasma  Paris  of  Anglo-Saxon 
fictioneers,  not  the  Broadwayed,  Strandified, 
dandified  Paris  of  the  Folies-Bergere  and 
the  Alcazar,  but  the  Paris  still  primitive  in 
innocent  and  unbribed  pleasure.  And  into 
the  Bobino,  its  sister  music  hall  of  the  com- 
mon people,  where  the  favourite  Stradel  and 
the  beloved  Berthe  Delny,  ''petite  poupee 
jolie''  as  she  so  modestly  terms  herself, 
bring  the  grocer  and  his  wife  and  children 


208     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

and  the  baker  and  his  wife  and  children 
temporarily  out  of  their  glasses  of  Bock  to 
yell  their  immense  approval  and  clap  their 
hands.  I  have  heard  many  an  audience  ap- 
plaud. I  have  heard  applause  for  Tree  at 
His  Majesty's  in  London,  for  Schroth  at 
the  Kleines  in  Berlin,  for  Feraudy  at  the 
Comedie  Fran9aise,  for  Skinner  at  the 
Knickerbocker  —  and  it  was  stentorian  ap- 
plause and  sincere  —  but  I  have  never  heard 
applause  like  the  applause  of  the  audience 
of  these  drabber  halls.  The  thunders  of 
the  storm  king  are  as  a  sonata  against  the 
staggering  artillery  of  approbation  when 
Pharnel  of  the  JNIontparnasse  sings  "  C'est 
pas  difficile ";  the  bowlings  of  the  north 
wind  are  as  zephyrs  against  the  din  of  eu- 
logy when  JMarius  Reybas  of  the  Bobino 
lifts  a  mighty  larynx  in  "  Mahi  Mahi." 
Great  talent?  Well,  maybe  not.  But 
show  me  a  group  of  vaudevillians  and  acro- 
bats who,  like  this  group  at  the  Gaite,  can 


PARIS  209 

amuse  one  night  with  risque  ballad  and 
somersault  and  the  next  with  Moliere  — 
and  not  be  shot  dead  on  the  spot! 

Leave  behind  you  Fysher's,  where  the 
smirking  monsieur  fills  the  red  upholstery 
with  big-spending  American  hinds  by 
warbling  into  their  liquored  bodies  cocoa 
butter  ballades  of  love  and  passion,  and 
come  over  to  the  untufted  Maillol's.  And 
hear  Maillol  sing  for  the  price  of  a  beer. 
Maillol's  lyrics  are  not  for  the  American 
virgin:  but,  at  that,  they  sing  laughter  in 
place  of  Fysher  lech.  Leave  behind  you 
Paillard's,  vainglorious  in  its  bastard 
salades  DanichefF,  its  souffles  Javanaise; 
leave  the  blatant  Boulevard  des  Itahens  for 
the  timid  histrop  of  Monsieur  Delmas  in 
the  scrawny  Rue  Huygens,  with  its  soupe 
aux  legumes  at  twenty  centimes  the  bowl, 
its  cotelette  de  veau  at  fifty  the  plate.  A 
queer  oasis,  this,  with  old  Delmas's  dog  suf- 
fering from  the   St.   Vitus  and  quivering 


210     EUROPEAFTER8:15 

against  the  tables  as  you  eat;  with  its 
marked  napkins  in  a  rack,  like  the  shaving 
cups  in  a  rural  barber  shop,  one  napkin  a 
week  to  each  regular  patron.  Avaunt,  ye 
gauds  of  Americanized  Paris.  Here  are 
poor  and  starving  artists  come  to  dine  aris- 
tocratically on  seventy-five  centimes  —  fif- 
teen cents.  Here  are  no  gapings  of  Cook's ; 
here  no  Broadway  prowlers.  A  dank  hole, 
yes,  but  in  its  cracked  plaster  the  sense  of 
Romany  simsets  of  yonder  times.  Leave 
behind  the  dazzling  dance  places  of  theatri- 
cal Montmartre,  American,  and  come  back 
of  the  wine  shop  in  the  Rue  de  la  Montagne- 
Sainte-Genevieve !  Leave  behind  the  turn- 
ing mill  wheel,  American,  and  come  into  the 
Avenue  de  Choisy,  where  over  a  preglacial 
store  a  couple  of  comets  baffle  the  night  and 
set  a  hundred  feet  in  motion,  feet  from  the 
Gobelin  quarter,  feet  from  the  Butte-aux- 
Cailles!  More  leathery  feet,  to  be  sure, 
than  the  suede  feet  of  the  Ziegfeld  Mont- 


PARIS  211 

martre,  but  kicking  up  a  different  wax  dust, 

the  wax  dust  of  a  different  Paris. 

*         *         *         * 

It  is  springtime  in  Paris!  It  is  night  in 
the  Paris  of  a  thousand  memories.  Can 
you,  now  remote  in  the  American  winter, 
hear  again  through  the  bang  of  the  steaming 
radiator  and  the  crunch  on  the  winter's  snows 
the  song  that  Sauterne  sang  into  your  heart 
on  the  terrace  named  after  the  lilacs  —  on 
that  wonderful,  star-born  evening  when  all 
the  world  seemed  like  a  baby's  first  laugh; 
all  full  of  dreams  and  hopes  and  thrilling 
futures?  And  can  you  rub  the  white  cold 
off  the  panes  and  look  out  across  the  Atlan- 
tic to  a  warmer  land  and  see  again  the  Gar- 
dens of  the  Tuileries  sleeping  in  the  moon 
glow  and  Sacre  Cceur  sentinelled  against 
the  springtime  sky  and  the  tables  of  the 
cafes  along  the  Grand  Boulevards  agog  and 
a-glitter  and  the  green-yellow  lights  of  the 
Ambassadeurs  tucked  away  in  the  trees  and 


212     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

the  al  fresco  amours  at  Fouquet's  and  the 
gay  crowds  on  the  Avenue  de  I'Opera  and 
the  massive  splendour  of  Notre  Dame  bless- 
ing the  night  with  its  towered  hands  and 
girls  shooting  ebony  arrows  from  the  bows 
of  ebony  eyes?  And  no  smell  of  Child's 
cooking  filters  into  the  open  to  offend  the 
nostril,  for  the  sachet  of  the  Bois  de  Bou- 
logne breeze  is  again  on  the  world.  Ah, 
Bois  de  Boulogne,  silent  now  under  the 
slumbering  heavens,  where  your  equal? 
From  the  Prater  to  the  Prado,  from  the 
Cassine  to  Central  Park,  one  may  not  find 

the  like  of  you,  fairy  wood  of  France! 

*         *         *         * 

Romance  hunter,  come  with  me.  Stom- 
ach-turned at  the  fat  niggers  dressed  up 
like  Turks  and  Algerians  and  made  to  lend 
an  "  air  '*  to  the  haunt  of  the  nocturnal 
belly  dancers  in  the  Rue  Pigalle,  sickened 
at  the  stupid  lewdities  of  the  Rue  Biot,  dis- 
gusted at  the  brassy  harlotries  of  the  Lapin 


PARIS  213 

Agil',  come  with  me  into  that  auberge  of  the 
Avenue  Trudaine  where  are  banned  catch- 
coin  stratagems,  fleshly  pyrotechnics,  that 
little  refuge  whose  wall  gives  forth  the  tab- 
leau of  Salis,  he  of  the  Niagaran  whiskers 
and  the  old  Chat  Noir,  strangling  the 
adolescent  versifiers  of  Montmartre,  the 
tableau  of  the  crimson  rose  of  Poetry  blos- 
soming from  out  their  strangling  pools  of 
blood.  Come  with  me  and  sing  a  chorus 
with  the  crowd  in  the  "  conservatoire  "  of 
the  Boulevard  Rochechouart  and  beat  time, 
like  the  rest  of  it,  with  knife  on  plate,  with 
glass  on  table.  Come  away  from  the  Bras- 
serie des  Sirenes  of  Mademoiselle  Marthe 
in  the  Faubourg  Poissonniere,  from  the  Rue 
Dancourt,  from  the  Moulin  Rose  in  the 
Mazagran  —  from  all  such  undiluted  cellars 
of  vicious  prostitution  —  if  these  be  Paris, 
then  West  Twenty-eighth  Street  in  New 
York. 

Look  you,  romance  seeker,  rather  into  the 


214     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

places  of  Montepin  and  Eugene  Sue.  The 
moon  is  down.  The  sound  of  dance  is 
stilled  in  the  city.  So  go  we  into  the  Rue 
Croissant,  with  its  shaveless  thuggeries  and 
marauding  cabs.  It  is  dark,  very.  And 
very  quiet.  And  the  sniff  of  unknown 
things  is  to  be  had  in  the  air.  Dens  of  drink 
with  their  furtive  thieves  .  .  .  the  enigma 
of  the  shadows  of  the  church  of  Saint  Eus- 
tache  .  .  .  slinking  feet  to  the  rear  of  you 
...  at  length,  the  Rue  Pirouette  and  the 
sign  of  the  angel  Gabriel  on  the  lantern 
before  the  house.  Here  is  good  company 
to  be  found !  Well  do  I  remember  the  bon- 
camaraderie  of  Henri  Laverte,  that  most 
successful  of  Parisian  burglars,  of  the  good 
Jean  Darteau,  that  most  artistic  of  all 
Parisian  second  story  virtuosi,  of  pretty 
Mado  Veralment,  who  was  not  convicted 
for  the  murder  of  her  erstwhile  lover  Aber- 
nal,  nor,  at  a  later  date,  for  that  of  her  erst- 
while lover  Crepeat,  both  of  whom,  so  it  had 
been  rudely  whispered  by  her  enemies,  had 


PARIS  215 

rashly  believed  to  desert  her  for  another 
charmer.  Witty  and  altogether  excellent 
folk.  Indeed,  I  might  go  further  from  the 
truth  than  to  say  that  in  no  woman  have 
ever  I  found  a  deeper,  a  more  authentic 
appreciation  of  the  poetry  of  Verlaine  than 
in  this  JMademoiselle  Mado. 

So,  too,  up  the  stone  steps  and  into  the 
Caveau  of  the  Rue  des  Innocents  .  .  .  and 
here  —  likewise  a  jolly  party.  Inquire  of 
most  persons  about  Le  Caveau  and  you  will 
be  apprised  that  it  is  a  "  vile  hole,"  "  a  place 
of  the  lowest  order."  It  is  dirty,  so  much 
I  will  grant;  and  it  is  of  a  Brobdingnagian 
smell.  Also,  is  it  frequented  almost  en- 
tirely by  murderers,  garroters,  and  thieves. 
But  to  say  it  is  a  "  vile  hole  "  or  "  a  place 
of  the  lowest  order  "  is  to  say  what  is  not 
true.  It  is  immeasurably  superior  to  the 
tinselled  inn  of  the  Rue  Royale.  And  its 
habitues  constitute  an  infinitely  more  re- 
spectable lodge.  If  the  left  wall  of  the  cav- 
ern   contains    its    "  roll   of   honour  " —  the 


216    EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

names  of  all  the  erstwhile  noted  gentlemen 
patrons  of  the  establishment  who  have,  be- 
cause of  some  slight  carelessness  or  over- 
sight, ended  their  days  in  the  company  of 
the  public  executioner  —  I  still  cannot  ap- 
preciate that  the  list  is  any  the  less  civilised 
than  the  head  waiter's  "  roll  of  honour  "  at 
the  celebrated  tavern  in  the  Avenue  de 
r Opera.  Nor  do  tlie  numerous  scribbled 
inscriptions  on  the  other  walls,  such  saucy 
epigrams  as  "  To  hell  with  the  prefect  of 
police,"  *'  The  police  are  damned  low  flea- 
full  dogs  "  and  the  like  impress  me  less  fa- 
vourably than  the  scribbled  inscriptions  on 
notes  of  assignation  placed  covertly  by  sub- 
sidised waiters  into  the  serviettes  of  the  Cal- 
lot-adorned  Thai'ses  in  the  spectacularized 
haunts  of  the  Bois.  The  piano  in  Le 
Caveau  may  be  diabetic,  senescent,  and  its 
operator  half  blind  and  all  knuckles  (as  he 
is),  but  the  music  it  gives  forth  is  full  of  tlie 
romance  of  Sheppard  and  Turpin,  of  stage 
coach  days  and  dark  and  nervous  highways, 


PARIS  217 

of  life  when  life  was  in  the  world  and  all  the 
world  was  young. 

Paris  when  your  skies  are  greying,  how 
many  of  us  know  you?  Do  we  know  your 
Rue  du  Pont  Neuf,  with  its  silent  melo- 
drama under  the  dawning  heavens,  or  do 
we  know  only  the  farce  of  your  Montmar- 
tre?  Do  we  know  the  drama  of  your 
Comptoir,  of  your  Rue  INIontorgueil,  when 
your  skies  are  faintl}^  lighting,  or  do  we 
know  only  the  burlesque  of  j^our  Maxim's 
and  your  Catelans?  Do  we,  when  the 
week's  work  of  your  humbler  people  is  done, 
see  the  laughter  in  dancing  eyes  in  the  Rue 
IVIoufFetard  or,  in  the  revel  of  your  Satur- 
day night,  do  we  see  only  the  belladonna'd 
leer  of  the  drabs  in  the  Place  Pigalle?  Do 
we  hear  the  romance  of  your  concertinas 
setting  thousands  of  hobnailed  boots  a-clat- 
ter  with  Terpsichore  in  the  Boulevard  de  la 
Chapelle,  in  Polonceau  and  ^lyrrha,  or  do 
we  hear  only  your  union  orchestra  sough- 
ing through  Mascagni  in  the  Cafe  de  Paris? 


218     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

Do  we  know  the  romance  of  your  peoples 

or    the    romance    of    your    restaurateurs? 

Which?     I  wonder. 

*         *         *         * 

Paris  has  changed  ...  it  isn't  the  Paris 
of  other  days  .  .  .  and  Paquerette,  httle 
Easter  daisy  in  whose  lips  new  worlds  were 
born  to  you,  little  flower  of  France  the 
music  and  perfume  of  whose  youth  are  yours 
still  to  remember  through  the  guerrilla  war- 
fare of  the  mounting  years  —  little  Paquer- 
ette is  dead.  And  you  are  old  now  and  mar- 
ried, and  there  are  the  children  to  look  out 
for  —  they're  at  the  school  age  —  and  life's 
quondam  melody  is  full  of  rests  and  skies 
are  not  always  as  blue  as  once  they  were. 
And  Paris,  four  thousand  miles  beyond  the 
seas  —  Paris  isn't  what  it  used  to  be  I 

But  Paris  is.  For  Paris  is  not  a  city 
—  it  is  Youth.  And  Youth  never  dies.  To 
Youth,  while  youth  is  in  the  arteries,  Paris 
is  ever  Paris,  a-throb  with  dreams,  a-dream 
with  love,  a-love  with  triumphs  to  be  tri- 


PARIS  219 

umphed  o'er.  The  Paris  of  Villon  and 
Murger  and  Du  Maurier  is  still  there  by  the 
Seine:  it  is  only  Villon  and  Murger  and 
Du  Maurier  who  ai*e  not.  And  if  your 
Paquerette  is  gone  forever,  there  is  Zinette 
—  some  other  fellow's  Paquerette  —  in  her 
place.  And  to  him  new  worlds  are  born  in 
her  lips  even  as  new  worlds  were  born  to 
you  in  the  kisses  of  another's  yesterday  .  .  . 
and  the  music  and  the  perfume  of  Zinette's 
youth  shall,  too,  be  rosemary  some  day  to 
this  other. 

The  only  thing  that  changes  in  Paris  is 
the  Paris  of  the  Americans,  that  foul  swell- 
ing at  the  Carrara  throat  of  Youth's  fairy- 
land. It  is  this  Paris,  cankered  with  the 
erosions  of  foreign  gold  and  foreign  itch, 
that  has  placed  "  souvenirs  "  on  sale  at  the 
Tomb  of  Napoleon,  that  vends  obscenities 
on  the  boulevards,  that  has  raised  the  price 
of  bouillabaisse  to  one  franc  fifty,  that  has 
installed  ice  cream  at  the  Brasserie  Zimmer, 
that  has  caused  innumerable  erstwhile  re- 


220     EUROPE    AFTER    8:15 

spectable  French  working  girls  to  don  short 
yellow  skirts,  stick  roses  in  their  mouths, 
wield  castanets  and  become  Spanish  dancers 
in  the  restaurants.  It  is  this  Paris  that 
celebrates  the  hour  of  the  apertif  with  Bronx 
cocktails  and  "  stingers,"  that  has  put 
Chicken  a  la  King  on  the  menu  of  the  Souf- 
flet,  that  has  enabled  the  ober-keUner  of 
Ledoyen  to  purchase  a  six-cylinder  Benz, 
that  has  introduced  forks  in  the  Rue  Fal- 
guiere,  that  has  made  the  beguins  at  the  an- 
nual Quat'-z-Arts  ball  conscious  of  the  visi- 
bility of  their  legs.  It  is  this '  Paris  that 
puts  on  evening  clothes  in  order  to  become 
properly  soused  at  Maxim's  and  cast  con- 
fetti at  the  Viennese  Magdalenes,  that 
lights  the  cabmen,  that  sings  "  We  Won't 
Go  Home  Till  Morning"  at  the  Catelan, 
that  buys  a  set  of  Maupassant  in  the  orig- 
inal French  (and  then  can't  read  it),  that 
sits  in  front  of  the  Cafe  de  la  Paix  reading 
the  New  York  Morning  Telegraph  and 
wondering  what  Jake  and  the  rest  of  the 


PARIS  221 

gang  are  doing  back  home,  that  gives  the 
Pittsburgh  high  sign  to  every  good-looking 
woman  walking  on  the  boulevards  in  the  be- 
lief that  all  French  women  are  in  the  con- 
stant state  of  desiring  a  liaison,  that  callouses 
its  hands  in  patriotic  music  hall  applause  for 
that  great  American,  Harry  Pilcer,  that 
trips  the  turkey  trot  with  all  the  Castle  inter- 
polations at  the  Tabarin.  It  is  this  Paris 
that  changes  year  by  year  —  from  bad  to 
worse.  It  is  this  Paris  that  remembers  Gaby 
Deslys  and  forgets  Cecile  Sorel,  that  re- 
members Madge  Lessing  and  arches  its  eye- 
brow in  interrogation  as  to  Marie  Leconte. 
This  is  the  Paris  of  Sniff  and  Snicker,  this 
the  Paris  of  New  York. 

But  the  other  Paris,  the  Paris  of  the 
canorous  night,  the  Paris  of  the  Parisians! 
The  little  studio  in  the  Rue  Leopold  Robert 
.  .  .  Alinette  and  Reine  and  Renee  .  .  . 
the  road  to  Auteuil  under  the  moon-shot 
baldaquin  of  French  stars  .  .  .  the  crowd 
in  the  old  gathering  place  in  the  Boulevard 


222     EUROPE    AFTER   8:15 

Raspail  .  .  .  the  music  of  the  heathen 
streets  .  .  .  dawn  in  the  Gardens  of  the 
Luxembourg  .  .  , 

Yes,  there's  a  Paris  that  never  changes. 
Always  it's  there  for  some  one,  some  one 
still  young,  still  dreaming,  still  with  eyes 
that  sweep  the  world  with  youth's  wild  am- 
bitions. Always  it's  there,  across  the  seas, 
for  some  one  —  maybe  no  longer  you  and 
me,  exiles  of  the  years  in  this  far-away 
America  —  but  still  for  some  one  younger, 
some  one  for  whom  the  loves  and  adven- 
tures and  the  hazards  of  life  are  still  so 
all-wondrous,  so  all-worth-while,  so  al- 
mighty. But,  however  old,  however  hard- 
ened by  the  trickeries  of  passing  decades, 
those  who  have  loved  Paris,  those  to  whom 
Paris  has  hfted  her  lips  in  youth,  these  never 
say  good-bye  to  her.  For  in  their  hearts 
sings  on  her  romance,  for  in  their  hearts 
march  on  the  million  memories  of  her  gipsy 
days  and  nights. 

THE  END 


AA    000  875  185    l 
CENTRAL  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 


DATE  DUE 

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